I keep changing my mind between being a witch (atheist, secular witch) and Spiritualism (the religion). Sometimes I even add on Wicca!! Honestly, I don’t like religion. I wasn’t raised with it. I’ve always loved science. And I like witchcraft because it resonates with me, I get results and religion never did that for me. I feel like a scientist when I do witchcraft!!!
But I feel I’m missing out on something with every choice I make. If I leave Spiritualism, I feel I’ll lose the community and positive relationships…if I leave witchcraft I’ll lose one of my true passions.
I keep thinking I’m going to lose my mediumship? Which is odd.
I talked to a trusted professor from school and helped me realize my intuition is warning me about Spiritualism and the church I go to. I definitely resonate with that. There’s something wrong because I keep changing my mind and this is the first time in my life I’ve been so indecisive.
Any ideas? Don’t know if I’m posting in the right place. Please be nice <3 thank you

Feeling shit from constant rejection, making me think dating is pure luck.
I posted this as a comment in a previous post, but would love some advice from the 3% community, especially dudes who were in my situation. I would like some help. For context, I'm 21 , still going to college and read his book 5 times.
I've been doing this for 1.5 years with no results. I managed to make great friends who truly care about me, got an internship with a company who values my time, managed to become fit (until COVID hit), and I'm not too afraid to hit on girls or talk to people in general (couldn't even talk to people on the phone back in the day). Out of the 21 girls I asked out who matched my list, I got rejected by all of them, it hurts.
It hurts when you see guys who don't know any of this material, are looks challenged, managed to get girls who looks wise match the perfect girl on my list. I'm not ugly, I've been told that I'm decent looking in looks, especially when I was fit. The only draw back I can think of is that I'm Indian origin living in a white country (NZ), (lived here 20 yrs now) but I'm not insecure of my race at all.
I texted this girl who seemed very receptive and laughed at all my jokes this past week. Showed signs of attractions, talked a lot when I asked her questions, and showed no resistance when I asked for her number. She never texted back. Shit broke me. This situation happens to all the previous girls I've asked out before, very receptive (flirting, ask questions, smiling) but never make it to a first date (usually they're taken).
I tried to use dating apps and I got no likes or anything. Bought premium, took good pictures, expanded my preferences, still got nothing. I have friends who have worse profiles than me, don't know anything of the material Corey teaches, and they managed to get dates with some cute girls. They also managed to finally end their dry spell after many years, I'm proud for my boys, but it irks me that I try so hard, but got zero results.
I know dating is a numbers game, but it hurts knowing that I read all this material, improved everywhere in my life, but still haven't gotten a date in these past 3 years. The last girl I dated was pure luck, she matched what I liked at the time, was the first girl I asked out, and managed to date her for a year. I would think with all the knowledge and improvement I got, I should have an easier chance to get dates, but nothing ever came up. This just makes me believe dating is just pure luck, if you don't have luck in there, it's gonna be rough. I don't think guys my age put as much effort as I did, and they managed to get the type of women they like.
When it comes to class, I have only a little fear to sit next to the pretty girls, talk to them, and ask for their number. When it comes to asking for the date, that's where it ends, either they're not interested or have a boyfriend (they actually do on their socials so not lying). It hurts that I can never pass that part and manage to get a first date.
I know attraction is a choice, no matter what I do, girls will either like me or not. But doesn't this just show me that dating is just luck? That I have be to lucky to find a woman who actually likes me?
I'm thinking of getting therapy to help me mentally, I have been feeling shit about this. Sorry if this sounds negative. I will still continue to follow Corey's advice and help others who need help in their dating life. I would like some advice to my conundrum.

When I was around 9-10 years old (so roughly 2012-2013) I played a flash game online which I’ve remembered all my life and tried to find.
Surprisingly, I have found nothing, almost as if the game never even existed.
This is what I know I can remember:

1. the game was an online singeplayer flash game 2. The genre was horror but didn't have jumpscares
2. Black and white
3. The gameplay was very simple; involving the player clicking between photos of black and white landscapes/rooms
4. There was a creepy baby or doll in a basement
5. The game ended with you taking a photo of an elderly person, who doesnt show up in the resulting photo

Bonus: I believe the game had sequels
Thank you reddit! I would love to find this it’s been driving me crazy

Me (44M) and my wife (42F) have been married 21 years. I wish I could say that it’s been a great 2 decades, but unfortunately we have had some tough times. I have contributed to some of those tough times and feel like I have owned up when I was wrong. My wife has held so much resentment and contempt for me for so long it’s “normal” now. She gets home from work and makes a B-line to our bedroom, which is generally where she stays for the night. She asks for more help around the house and I do my best, but it never seems good enough. I asked her on and off for many years that we needed marriage counseling and she finally agreed. But then when we finally found a place that would take our insurance she backed out. Her reasoning was she needed to focus on fixing herself. In the meantime nothing changed. The avoidance, resentment, contempt, the sour moods, the coldness, and everything was still there. When I didn’t agree to a 1 or 2 week break (long story) cause it didn’t make much sense, she got extremely frustrated and said, fine- I guess I’ll go to marriage counseling.
We’ve been going for about 3 weeks now, about half virtual and half in-person. I think the therapist picked up quickly that I’m trying and she’s still not satisfied. He’s told her multiple times she needs to figure out what she wants and what her goals are with marriage counseling. She keeps telling him she knows and is trying to figure that out. My wife has trouble ruminating and dealing with issues from long ago. Needless to say she doesn’t let things go as easily as I do. I try to be easy going- because life is too short to be angry all the time. This is one of the many things we argue about. It has caused some issues as well because it’s like we are complete opposites now.
Although counseling hasn’t been going “great”, it’s been good enough. I thought that both of us talking to someone that’s a mediator that maybe it would help us. The first part of the week we got into an argument, but the week ended very good on Mother’s Day. We actually had breakfast Sunday morning with our kids. There was some laughing and joking and the only arguing was between our 2 teenagers and briefly. She seemed to be relaxing a little and warming up some. It felt good, like it used to. Although we got into that argument in the beginning of the week, it ended on a great note on Sunday and it renewed my positivity that maybe we can actually turn things around.
I got her some flowers (which is standard) and a fat gift card to a very nice upscale salon. I told her she deserves to treat herself to whatever she wants. She seemed meh about the gifts and card. Here I am thinking happy thoughts…obviously we still have a ton of growing and learning to do, but this boosted my spirits and my optimism. Today we had marriage counseling. The therapist asked how things were and we said how we started off with an argument at the beginning of the week, but I thought the weekend, especially Sunday was really good. My wife’s reaction was that it was “alright”. I try not to read too much into this. But during the session she goes on to say that nothing has changed- she feels the same and she’s been trying to be a little nicer. I wasn’t looking for our problems to be solved in 3 weeks, but I just felt like things were moving in the right direction, only to find that she still feels the same way.
We have 2 kids (17F) and (19M). Now that are kids are grown and almost out of the house, now it’s like she is contemplating “what’s next”.
I’m making some changes and trying to help more around the house- but it never seems to be enough. Because of all this I feel like divorce will just happen to us. Anyone else experience anything similar?

Everything that's needed for fertile life is pushed toward sea level. Bidirectionally. Falls downward if above water, or floats up from below or.
But either way, the things that settle there are the stuff of fertile, festering abundance. The edible and decomposing ingredients of all life as we know it.
Everything moves toward sea level because of pressure. Barometric pressure pushing down or buoyancy pushing up, that beautifully, magically, result in all necessary building blocks being available at the water's surface.
The things animals and plants and bacteria need to survive.
Which means not only that gravity is nothing more than pressure, but also that the rules of gravity flip around at the surface. And only some things.
All physical material has innate properties that cause them to respond in specific ways to this dual-pressure gravity system, depending on their value. Those with high nutritional and reproductive potential all seem to float or drift or splash back to the event horizon at sea level.
Dense matter like rocks, containing overly compact and therefore inaccessible ingredients of life, may be pushed down a mountain by atmospheric pressure, but they do not stop at the surface. If given the chance to find equilibrium at sea level, they sail right past, ignoring buoyant gravity, self-sorting away from the event horizon. Because rocks are not needed for procreation or sustenance. Usually.
Low density ingredients like gasses may float up through water, and keep on floating once they reach the surface. They continue up though the above-water pressure system’s “gravity,” taking their place at the top. And by being there, they contribute to the downward pressure we used to know as the only gravity.
But important, nascent things like seeds and decaying matter and land animals and edible fish all effortlessly float back up, to where they can participate in life. Right there at the event horizon’s fertile sphere, which falls exactly between underwater and above. The plane of existence between two gravities.
And this dual direction, dual gravity system that endlessly pushes everything within its grasp up or down until it has been processed again and again by the both pressure systems, this event horizon is where literally everything happens.
Which suggests that the most fertile place in the universe is the untapped event horizon. A black hole’s potential to become the next dual-gravity system.

33M, caucasian, non-smoker, social drinker, history of SVT with overall low risk factors. Currently taking Pantapropozole, Carvidolol, Multivitamin, Iron, Miralax. I'll attempt to make this short-winded and hope this counts as appropriate for this subreddit!. Around ~August 2023, I suddenly started having random spikes/drops in my sugar levels, as well as fatigue and notable weight loss (40 pounds over 4 1/2 months). My previous PCP started the workup and over the next ~3 months, I was in and out of hospital admissions/countless doctor visits. Over this time I started to develop more symptoms, most notably night sweats, increasing GI issues, and worsening fatigue/tiredness.
Because the symptoms were mostly non-specific, I had pretty broad, general workups with few things off (my hemoglobin dropped several points in November then slowly recouped back to 15.5. Saw a hematologist and he basically just said "you had a bleed, it clotted off and now you're recovering. If it drops again come back to me"). Full body CT w/contrast, MRI of spine/brain, colonoscopy/endoscopy, spinal tap, echo, CPX, countless blood tests which I would fail to mention all of, but including endocrine/rheumatological and autoimmune markers, as well as viral potential causes.
At some point in December my gp basically threw his hands up and said "we don't have anything to work with, the few abnormal things are recovering". Fast forward to February, I end up in the ER with severe nausea and a dull pain below my lower left rib cage. They do a repeat CT and mention that my spleen is still "minimally enlarged" but there are no noticable masses, and my liver is "no longer slightly enlarged". These are two things I was never told about, I suppose because they felt they weren't significant enough? But made me realize I needed another opinion/better guidance. The radiologist also noted on the report that I had "mild haziness near the mesenteric root of the pancreas level", but "pancreas unremarkable otherwise" as well as normal lymph nodes in the area. He recommended checking for pancreatitis and/or mesenteritis.
I go into a new GP in March. She's fantastic - extremely thorough and importantly doesn't immediately try to blame this all on the easy things. She gets me into GI and hematology (had another GI doctor but she wanted me to get another opinion, as the old one basically said your colonoscopy/egd are normal, come back in 7 years). Hematology came first, and he basically said objectively, you acutely then chronically bled, used up all your iron stores which caused excess fatigue (fatigue/tiredness is still a primary issue for me but is substantially better than a month ago when I started iron supplementation) and now you're recouping. We can do a bone marrow biopsy or a PET scan, but I can tell you what they will show: nothing. I asked about the spleen/livemesentery involvement and he just said "your blood work and scans show no sign of a mass, if malignancy were making you this symptomatic, it would be more obvious and you wouldn't have seen any improvement. In addition your liver has reduced in size and your spleen is still barely enlarged with no signs of mass, malignancy doesn't act this way".
I leave the visit at least more optimistic about the situation, but still feeling awful and like this is some type of GI related malignancy that's killing me, frankly. (As a side note, symptoms became so problematic that I had to stop working full time which has obviously been another stresser during all of this).
Then the GI visit comes (about 2 weeks ago now at this point). We go over everything and he just basically says "let's skip the MRI and go for a pillcam to get a closer look at your small intestines, and an endoscopic ultrasound to take a closer look at your pancreas and this inflamed part of your mesentery". Sounds great to me! I know people go years looking for a diagnosis sometimes, but the last 8 months have been the most exhausting/stressful/longest of my life and he seemed adamant about getting to the bottom of this.
Here's where my concern/question comes in: back in December in my last hospital admission, the hospitalist asked what I thought this may be. I pretty quickly said PC, because of the way things progressed and the initial, non-specific symptoms + sugar issues (which seem to have mostly gotten better? I've also regained 30 pounds since, which is a "good" sign I know). He kind of laughed and just said "your pancreas has been imaged and looked at twice by two separate radiologists and neither saw anything to worry about" (this was before the February scan showing mesentery involvement). I kind of gave up on that idea/worry for a long time because of the assured way he answered my concern over it, but now I've got it in my head that that's what has been the culprit all this time and have been told CT's miss signs of PC pretty frequently, and the mesentery/spleen findings are a result of pancreatic tail or body involvement that's spread, which the GI did mention it was unlikely to be in the head as you'd almost certainly see bile duct involvement/jaundice evidence at this point, or the classic pale/clay stools, which I haven't had.
I know there is pretty strong evidence to this point to suggest it isn't a pancreatic tumor, given 3 contrast CT's now over 9 months with no sign of it, improvement in some symptoms (night sweats are virtually gone, fatigue is significantly better), some of the more obvious/common symptoms not being there, like the stool/jaundice, but instinctively this just feels like the right place to look. I'm not terrified of a diagnosis at this point, but I'm absolutely mortified that this is going to get worse before I have the chance to even figure out what it is because of the things that have continued to worsen (nausea/malaise in the morning especially, tiredness/dyspnea... Well, the dyspnea has improved since the iron supplementation as well, but considering I could get up and run five miles 9 months ago and now a small flight of stairs whip me...). The idea of losing ~6 months of valuable time if I'd pushed this concern harder back in December is also a hard pill to swallow. Speaking of, the pillcam is Thursday, and the EUS is the 28th. I tried to move it up but they are booked out (I feel like I they suspected pancreatic cancer they would have got me in sooner as well) and I don't want to push it anymore in the case that it isn't that, and I potentially take someone's spot that needs it before I do. I guess I'm asking for someone to talk me off this ledge and trust that something obvious wasn't missed, or even recommend I continue to push this as maybe it sounds like a familiar situation someone has witnessed in the past where it ended up being something like PC. I think I've mentally accepted almost every potential outcome of this situation except for that one, which likely has to do with me being intimately familiar with what it looked like in the end for a friend.
That was... Long-winded. Sorry, I tried haha. I wish you all the best of health moving forward!

I am talking to him again :/ he’s been reaching out via text and I always feel horrible when I think about not responding even though I have every right/reason to just fucking ignore him. I did have him blocked from January up until like April and we were completely no contact but I started thinking about the fact that he probably tried to reach out during then and felt ignored by me/sad and I felt really bad so I unblocked.
I honestly have lost any hope that I’ll ever get out of this “relationship” considering I’ve let him back into my life / gone back to him at least 5 times now and he has done absolutely atrocious things to me I feel like there’ll never be a last straw for me which is what scares me the most. I always feel like in the moment whatever it is he did is the last straw and then months go by and it still bothers me but I am able to ignore it kind of and go back to him or let him back in.
I also have gotten into this really unfortunate mindset recently that majority of men are not good people / cheaters / etc (which I am very aware is a result of what I’ve been through plus childhood stuff probably too and is definitely a bad mindset to have) but I do think this way and have basically been telling myself well why even try with others if you’re going to get cheated on and abused no matter who you’re with. I am pretty sure this might also be a byproduct of depression / SERIOUSLY low self esteem I’ve been dealing with. Which would probably be a good starting point in what to deal with.
I also am quite young (21) and recently quit drinking (7 months!) hopefully for good as I have had a binge drinking problem since I was 15 which became rather severe around the time I turned 18. He has surprisingly been extremely supportive of my sobriety + also doesn’t drink. Considering my age it is VERY hard to meet people without alcohol focused activities and in general people my age tend to be extremely turned off once I mention I’m completely sober (no weed nothing) which I know not everyone is like that but vast majority I’ve interacted with have been. So idk I feel somewhat trapped because of this as well which is kind of stupid.
Idk now I’m just rambling but I’m struggling to believe I’ll ever truly be free from him and it scares me so much. And that I’ll be a shell of myself more than I already am the longer I stay.
Maybe just looking for some hopeful stories of those who made it out and truly genuinely feel “free” if that makes sense.
So sorry for the long rant LOL thanks to anyone who reads.

As the title states, (and despite the existential risk to myself - as I am disabled, impoverished, and my survival is reliant on the room I rent in her attic - given her recent threat to have have me thrown out by the police because she could not handle the feelings she had during the argument that she initiated), I have finally drawn a bright red line in the metaphorical sand regarding her treatment of me. This is the culmination of 8+ years of sustained, one-sided, unreciprocated, and unsuccessful effort on my part to sustain, salvage, repair, or improve our "relationship"
 
I've learned a lot from the stories and people on this subreddit, and I know if anyone can understand the way that I'm feeling about this it's you guys.
 
Any input, commentary, criticism, insight, commiseration, etc, is very welcome, and I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read it.
 
Anyways, enough preamble, here's the letter in all of my ridiculously-verbose inglory (the square-bracketed disclaimers, etc, were part of the letter as delivered to her, since she is selective illiterate whenever there's something she doesn't like):
 
[START]
 
[This document begins with a 382 word AI-generated summary (titled "AI- GENERATED SUMMARY:" below the square-bracketed opening remarks), estimated at 1m23s time required to read. If you are unable or unwilling to make it through even this brief summary, then there is literally nothing else I could possibly do to assist in your comprehension of my positions. The full message following the summary is approximately 2100 words, estimated at approximately 8 minutes to read.]
 
[If you would like assistance in understanding things I've written that you're struggling to interpret or comprehend, you can go to chatgpt.com (no account necessary), or download the ChatGPT app from the Google Play Store on your phone. You can simply interact with the chat in natural language (in other words, type as though you were texting another person) and it will understand what you are saying. If you are struggling to understand how to interact with it effectively, you can simply inform it of that (in any wording you choose) and it will assist you with altering your approach to receive more effective results.]
 
AI-GENERATED SUMMARY:
 
Your son's message is a powerful declaration of his boundaries, grievances, and intentions within your relationship. Here's a breakdown to help you understand:
 
Preface: He advises you to read with an open mind and, if needed, with assistance due to the emotional complexity.
 
Declaration of Disengagement: He firmly states his decision to disengage from any form of interaction or acknowledgment outside of essential landlord-tenant matters.
 
Condemnation of Abuse: He accuses you of perpetuating a cycle of abuse that has deeply impacted his health and stability.
 
Rejection of Coercion: He dismisses the idea that being evicted is a viable solution to the abuse, highlighting the coercive nature of such a choice, and how it leaves him vulnerable to further harm.
 
Criticism of Your Behavior: He unreservedly condemns your actions, particularly your exploitation and manipulation, emphasizing the gravity and effects of your conduct.
 
Challenges to Your Claims: He directly confronts your claims regarding his efforts in the relationship, asserting that he has consistently made extensive attempts to maintain it, despite your accusations to the contrary.
 
Commitment to Compliance: He unequivocally affirms his commitment to compliance with all landlord-related demands, demonstrating his unwavering respect for your authority as the homeowner.
 
Demand for Clarity: He demands clear and unambiguous knowledge of the requisite terms when any changes to living arrangement paradigms are demanded, underscoring his willingness to comply with any directives you may issue.
 
Defense Against Gaslighting: He firmly asserts his unwavering commitment to respecting your property and authority, preemptively refuting any attempts to accuse him otherwise.
 
Insights into Your Behaviour: He offers insights into patterns in your behaviour, linking them to moments of vulnerability or distress in your life.
 
Call for Self-Reflection: He urges you to seek professional help for your narcissism and unresolved childhood traumas.
 
Caution Regarding Gravity: He states that failing to address your responsibilities would be a missed opportunity for both of you to salvage the relationship and resolve underlying issues.
 
Reiteration of Hope: Despite his current stance, he leaves the door open for reconciliation if you undergo necessary personal growth.
 
Closure on Unequal Effort: He firmly states that he can no longer sustain the one-sided effort in the relationship and won't continue to do so.
 
It's evident that he's deeply hurt and demanding acknowledgment, change, and resolution in your relationship.
 
[end of AI-generated summary; my full, non-AI-generated message follows below]
 
[I recommend that you read this in its entirety at a time and capacity level where your literacy and comprehension are at their highest level, and preferably with the interpretational assistance of a knowledgeable and competent support person or technological assistant.]
 
[Presumably, after reading a few sentences or less, your defense mechanisms will be activated and you will eject. However, as with the vast majority of the things I have said to you that have gone unacknowledged, I am completely certain that the contents are cogent and comprehensible, and I believe that with competent support and vulnerable effort you undoubtedly have the raw cognitive capacity necessary for comprehension if you are able to stabilize your emotional reactions and put real effort into the actions necessary for you to understand my words.]
 
I will not talk to you.
I will not look at you.
I will not approach you.
I will not acknowledge you.
 
If you attempt to interact with me on any interpersonal level not related to your role as a landlord, I will reserve the right to express just how fucking despicable it is to treat such a vulnerable person with such utter disregard and abuse for so fucking long.
 
The cycle of abuse you have maintained to destabilize me for your own pathological reasons has caused - and continues to cause - extensive damage to my health, stability, and existence. However, since I know your response to this would likely be some variation of "you're not a victim here [my name], so if I treat you so bad, just leave", I'll preemptively and unequivocally condemn such coercive and abusive tactics, and state again (as I did the other day), that the forced choice between your abuse and life-threatening-homelessness is obviously no choice at all, and leaves me perpetually subject to your coercion and abusive control.
 
Such exploitation by you is absolutely disgusting, and honestly I understand why you run away from yourself at every single instance where you're in danger of having your lifelong house-of-cards ego even slightly threatened. I know if I treated another human being the way you treat me for even a moment, let alone for the literal years you have done so, I would not be able to face myself in the mirror either. You should be fucking ashamed of yourself.
 
You say I "don't want to be your son anymore", as though it has been someone other than me making hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of efforts and attempts in order to try and single-handedly keep our relationship alive, and as though it has been someone other than you who has stonewalled me for years about every single legitimate and valid time I attempted to gain even the slightest foothold as a full human being in the owner-pet relationship you have fought so hard to maintain. You siphon, in fact demand, emotional supply whenever you so choose, and then fucking discard me as soon as it appears that I might do anything that would result in you losing even a fraction of a percent of the 99% to 1% imbalance you believe is an immutable part of our "relationship".
 
I will do my absolute best to be in my room as much as physically possible when you are home, so as to minimize the need to be physically adjacent to you in the course of our respective activities of daily living.
 
I, again, remain unequivocally committed to my position of deference and compliance towards any rules/demands related to my existence, presence, or activities as your tenant.
 
As you refuse to provide any sort of unambiguous guidance or clarification whatsoever regarding your shifting demands affecting my ability to access/perform basic activities of daily living, I will continue to act in good faith with respect to my adherence to all previously-established arrangements and protocols (whether codified or de facto) regarding such activities. To the full extent of my abilities, and to the extent that it is physically possible, I will immediately and unequivocally comply with any alterations, additions, or excisions you choose to impose regarding the nature of our physical coexistence as landlord and tenant, regardless of your disregard or intent for any harm to my stability that will ensue as a result.
 
If you intend to attempt to manipulate or threaten or gaslight me to illegitimately and dishonestly accuse me of failing to comply with your rights and demands as the homeownelandlord, then I can assure you that such efforts will be ineffective and inadvisable. The extensive history of my genuine, documented, and unwavering commitment to absolute respect of your home, property, and landlord-tenant authority is unassailable, and nothing has or will change about the good faith nature of my efforts to simply live peacefully and work on stabilizing my health and continuing to attempt to develop basic protocols that offer me the opportunity to seek the ways and means required to sustainably exist, survive, and seek meaning and fulfilment as a human being.
 
To try and make it a bit more bite-sized (without warranty as to the efficacy of said efforts), since I know when your ego is threatened you conveniently - and dishonestly - become completely unable to read a couple thousand words:
 

• I have never been more disgusted by the actions of anyone or anything more in my entire fucking existence.

 

• I will continue to be an absolute model tenant, despite the harmful effects of your constant abuse, and I will unequivocally comply with any demands you make with your authority as my landlord. I will explicitly and aggressively defend against any attempts to gaslight me, or attempt to dishonestly accuse me of failing to comply with any such demands.

 

• [note that the contents of this bullet point are neither a threat of suicide, nor an indication of any intent whatsoever to harm myself or others. I am including this disclaimer to preemptively remove your ability to selectively manipulate my words in order to further gaslight me]
  Feel free at anytime in your life to decide that maybe it might be time to face the fact that - though skillful in your delusion - you are the same scared child you were 40 years ago, and if you ever want to truly and meaningfully experience what it's like to be secure with yourself beneath the false veneer of superficial and ego-protecting interactions you surround yourself with at the exclusion of true and honest existential vulnerability, then you need to seek, engage with, and be honest and vulnerable with, professional clinical care for your intractable narcissism and the lifelong effects and deficits associated with same. In other words, to reductively and rhetorically restate what you disgustingly told me the other day as a means of deflecting from the fact that you couldn't go more than two seconds without contradicting yourself, “get your fucking meds adjusted”.
  

 

• When faced with any sort of challenge to your control or authority, your lifelong fear of abandonment has caused you to push people away before they have the opportunity to leave you, resulting in premature, self-created, and misdirected sabotage of significant relationships at the first sign of disturbance or genuine vulnerability. I know you're terrible at recognizing or interpreting patterns or facts, but think, for example, about when your efforts to remove me from your life and/or house have been at their most intense:

 

• (a) in 2016(ish) when conflicts about my role in helping with the [redacted address][job of cleaning out my grandpa's apartment after Alzheimer's took hold] triggered feelings of grief and fear in you at the decline of your father's health and the inevitability of his then-upcoming death,

 

• (b) in late 2019 through 2020ish, in the leadup to and aftermath of your father's death, where you threatened or demanded my removal from your house during damn-near every single minor conflict about utterly insignificant household disputes. The vulnerability and grief you felt surrounding his death triggered the core-level unresolved sense of abandonment you carry as a result of the lack of parental affection you received because of, inter alia, the level of care required by your [editor's note: dying of CF as a teenager] sister and resultant lack of parental support available to you as a result,

 

• (c) in 2021ish, surrounding your mother's acute medical events and her subsequent death, where your treatment of me followed effectively the same patterns and underlying causes as the item above (sans explicit threats of eviction, opting instead for the more oblique and covert references that have been your MO until the recent regression to explicit threats within the past few days).

 

• (d) in 2024, surrounding the final decline and subsequent death of [dog], where all of the same behaviours described above returned and steadily escalated, culminating in telling me to get the fuck out of your house because I wouldn't stop moving some boxes for 30 minutes, and then telling me that you were going to call the police to have me removed from your house as a result of your inability to force me to stop making accurate statements that damaged your ego and need for unquestioned interpersonal control in your self-appointed role as the sole ruler of the relational hierarchy you fought so hard to maintain.

 

• You need to actively and vulnerably seek and participate in professional clinical treatment for the lifelong effects of the hollow narcissism that has maladaptively protected you from your deepest childhood injuries and vulnerabilities, at the expense of truly genuine connection with, at the very least, your firstborn and only son.

 

• If you want me gone from your house, and life (and possibly my own life, given the extreme existential risk posed by homelessness for a vulnerable person with the significant disabilities I am faced with), then you will have to have me physically removed from your house in cold blood, and until the day you (or I, depending on the order) die you will live with that being the last time you ever saw the son that you took for granted and abused for 32 fucking years while he groveled at your feet begging for even scraps of affection or humanity from the person who constantly love-bombed and discarded him at her convenience to serve her own narcissistic desires worth no regard for the whole entire person she was subjugating to the role of, barely, a pet.

 

• Be aware that if you choose to remove me from your life as a pathological and assuredly-ineffective avoidance mechanism to try and preemptively shield yourself from the fear of abandonment that is triggered in you as a result of my overwhelmingly valid and necessary actions to demand that you cease your lifelong efforts to subjugate me in your self-created hierarchical position at the top of our unequal relationship, then you will be doing yourself an irreparable disservice by extinguishing whatever sliver of opportunity might remain for you to get the help you need to allow you to finally see me as a real person and begin making real decisions and changes and efforts to participate in efforts to salvage whatever scraps of hope might remain for us to have a relationship before both/either of us die.

 

• Feel free to ignore and/or conceal the tens of thousands of words of documented history in order to share contextless excerpts of this text within your self-serving echo chambers in your efforts to receive false validation of your delusional victimhood. Or, alternatively, feel free to vulnerably share this in its entirety - along with the full corpus of my messaging regarding the severity of the harms caused by your behaviours - with a competent and knowledgeable mental health professional(s) for the purposes of seeking treatment for your underlying pathologies and working towards genuine growth.

 

• In the unlikely (though incomprehensibly-or-perhaps-delusionally-still-hopeful) event that you are still reading, I will conclude by saying that the possibility for any hope of salvaging our relationship lies firmly and solely within your control.

 

• After over 8 years of significant, relentless, documented, often-vilified, and absolutely unreciprocated efforts to single-handedly to put 100% of the effort into a relationship that you reaped the benefits of while remaining unwavering in your abdication of even the slightest of responsibilities, I have run out of ways, means, ideas, and capacity to continue unsuccessfully trying to do both of our parts.

 

• I am not closing the door to the possibility of reconciliation if/once you have undertaken the extensive individual work you need to do if you are ever going to be able and willing to put the necessary effort into repairing our relationship. But neither am I continuing to continue working outside your closed door hoping that one day I might be able to do enough to influence you to treat me like a full, real, EQUAL, human being.

 
I love you, and goodbye for now. I hope to see you on the other side, but I cannot force you to undertake the journey.
 
- [name]
 
[/END]

Can anyone speak to the level of pre-planning care they have received or to the quality of the service they have had through jaw surgery in the Kaiser system? I live in Los Angeles and have a Kaiser HMO but just had a consult with an out of network surgeon who used to work with them for years. I feel like the level of consideration and care may be much better with him (and the technology more advanced) I’m weighing the possibility of changing insurance to BCBS and having to pay for the surgery and get reimbursements through Blue Cross Blue Shield after open enrollment (only catch is I don’t have $60-$100k cash laying around in my bank account…) Kaiser seems more like a factory for this type of surgery and after reading “confessionsofametalmouth” blog I got scared lol. I’m hoping to be reassured that Kaiser is great to go with since it would be the easiest and most affordable route.
Kaiser is the most straight forward and streamlined and the most likely insurance to cover this entire surgery, but I’ve heard that they don’t have the best surgical pre-planning or use the most state of the art technology to render the aesthetic result like other private practices might. I’ve also heard that they only give the surgeons 30 minutes to prepare for the surgery and there is much less back and forth in the pre planning process about the final aesthetic outcome. Of course these surgeons see a high volume of patients and have a ton of experience, but my face is my only face and it takes a lot of trust to let someone change it without seeing any kind of rendering or approximation of the outcome. Sorry this was so long… would love any advice or to hear about people’s experiences!

I’m so furious about giving one last chance to psychologists as people, and I regret it.
My first experience with psychologist happened when I was a kid and my mental sicknesses were developing rapidly. Yet instead of a visit to psychiatrist, my mom led me to a psychologist who had been making a fool of me for two damn years! She saw the obvious development of my suicidal tendencies and multiple mental disorders, yet was lying to me on purpose: “It’s just a phase, dear. It will go away. There’s nothing to worry about, dear. It will go away on its own. You’re not mentally ill”. The result: now by the age of 19 I’ve got major depressive disorder, complex PTSD, dermatilomania and total sexual dysfunction — all in advanced form.
In the end I realized that I need to go to a psychiatrist and so I did — literally the best decision of my life. My psychiatrist helped me a lot with powerful medicine, yet asked me to go to psychologist. So, I was calming myself: “Not all the psychologists are frauds, right? This time it will be a normal one, they’ll help me”
How stupid were I!
The second psychologist was even worse than the previous one. She was smiling at my every trauma confession, as if somebody gave her 2000 bucks for birthday. I couldn’t endured this, so I asked:
“The hell are you smiling at?”
“ Why can I not smile?”
“Well, at least because you must help me and must show at least some respect towards my feelings with a serious face”
“But I understand your feelings. I understand what you’ve gone through”
“No, you’re not. You’ve never gone through the same. How can you understand that?”
“I understand and I know because you’ve just told me about those feelings”.
I was speechless.
The last straw was her disrespect towards my feelings about my abusive mother. The psychologist said, that I must let go of my anger, because I supposedly suffer from my anger and not from my mom’s abuse, because the abuse is in the past, while my anger is in the present, and if I don’t let go of my emotions, I’d not be a good Christian.
I flipped her off and left the room.
Dear brothers and sisters, if you feel depressed, don’t go to those Zigmund Fraud’s sect adepts. They are worse than any toxic friend and will cause only more damage. Go only to real scientists — psychiatrists. They will help you with real medicine, and not with abracadabra magic calming words and breathing exercises. Only real science can help.

3.0. THE THIRD BUDDHIST COUNCIL:

Venerable Moggaliputta Tissa Thera led the 3rd Buddhist Council of Theravada School. That was not a schism as the outsiders were not the true members of the Sangha. However, the king supported them like the members of the Sangha.

Because it helped promote tolerance and mutual respect, Asoka desired that people should be well-learned (bahu sruta) in the good doctrines (kalanagama) of other people's religions. [The Edicts of King Asokaan, English rendering by Ven. S. Dhammika © 1994]

King Asoka was supporting everyone who claimed he belonged to the Dhamma-Vinaya community (the Sangha) established by the Sakyamuni. However, they did not join the Dhamma-Vinaya community, nor know, nor care the Buddha's teaching.
Venerable Moggaliputta Tissa Thera determined that "the Vibhajjavāda alone contained the teaching of the Buddha."

Rest of the monks who were true believers, told about the doctrine of the Buddha, that it was Vibhajjavāda i.e. the religion of analytical reasoning. This answer was supported by Moggaliputta-Tissa who was present there. He told that the Buddha was Vibhajjavādin (analyser). The Thera was made the gurdian of the Order. To purify the Sangha, the king requested to hold the Uposatha ceremony.

Uposatha

uposatha : [m.] Sabbath day; observance of 8 precepts; biweekly recitation of the Vinaya rules by a chapter of Buddhist monks.
Mūḷuposatha sutta (AN 3.70), (Bhikkhu Bodhi)

“There are, Visākhā, three kinds of uposatha. What three? The cowherds’ uposatha, the Nigaṇṭhas’ uposatha, and the noble ones’ uposatha [...] (3) “And how, Visākhā, is the noble ones’ uposatha observed? The defiled mind is cleansed by exertion. And how is the defiled mind cleansed by exertion?

The mentioned uposatha ceremony is for the monks to recite the Vinaya rules. It cannot be observed with the participation of the public, including the monks (and priests) from other religions.

[Uposatha (Thanissaro Bhikkhu)] The monastic observance may be held in one of four ways, depending on the size of the Community in a particular territory: If four bhikkhus or more, they meet for a recitation of the Pāṭimokkha; if three, they declare their mutual purity to one another; if two, they declare their purity to each other; if one, he marks the day by determining it as his uposatha. In addition to these regular observance days, the Buddha gave permission for a Community to recite the Pāṭimokkha only on one other occasion: when unity has been reestablished in the Community. This, the Commentary says, refers only to occasions when a major dispute in the Community has been settled (such as a schism—see Chapter 21), and not to occasions when the uposatha has been suspended for minor reasons. Thus there are two occasions on which the bhikkhus are allowed to meet for the uposatha: the last day of the lunar fortnight and the day for reestablishing unity.

The public uposatha is open to everyone, including non-Buddhists. The participants are expected to observe a set of uposatha sīla, either 8, 9 or 10 (aṭṭha-sīla, navanga-sīla or dasa-sīla).
uposathika : [adj.] one who observes [uposatha] precepts.

Aṭṭha-sīla 8 (Uposatha, Uposatha-sīla): 6. Vikālabhojanā veramaṇī； 7. Naccagītavāditavisūkadassanā mālāgandhavilepanadhāraṇamaṇanavibhūsanaṭṭhānā veramaṇī； 8. Uccāsayanamahāsayanā veramaṇī;

On the basis of not-Dhamma as ‘Dhamma’… Dhamma as ‘not-Dhamma’… not-Vinaya as ‘Vinaya’… Vinaya as ‘not-Vinaya’, Emperor Asoka expelled the non-Vibhajjavādis who could not observe the uposatha, including the Sarvāstivādis, from the Sangha.

[Schism (Thanissaro Bhikkhu)] Ven. Upāli: “‘A split in the Community, a split in the Community (saṅgha-bheda)’ it is said. To what extent is the Community split?” The Buddha: “There is the case where they explain not-Dhamma as ‘Dhamma’… Dhamma as ‘not-Dhamma’… not-Vinaya as ‘Vinaya’… Vinaya as ‘not-Vinaya’… [...] a light offense as ‘a heavy offense’… a heavy offense as ‘a light offense’… an offense leaving a remainder as ‘an offense leaving no remainder’… an offense leaving no remainder as ‘an offense leaving a remainder’… a serious offense as ‘a not-serious offense’… a not-serious offense as ‘a serious offense.’ On the basis of these eighteen grounds they pull away, pull apart, they perform a separate uposatha, perform a separate Invitation, perform a separate Community transaction. To this extent the Community is split.”—Cv.VII.5.2

Devadatta caused the first schism on the basic of Vinaya rules. The Vajjian monks caused the second schism on the same ground. The Sangha established by the Sakyamuni was attacked several times from within.

Vibhajjavādi Dhamma Missions

Emperor Asoka sent forth nine missionaries to nine different countries to propagate the religion of the Buddha and crowned it with success... also the Bhikkuni Sangha in Aparantaka, Suvannabhumi and Ceylon.

Emperor Asoka sent his son and daughter, Arahant Maha Mahinda Thera and Arahant Sanghamitta Theri, to Sri Lanka, where the events of the 3rd Buddhist Council were recorded.
"Arahant Mahinda, who introduced the Buddhadhamma to Sri Lanka, is the Redactor of the Buddhapåjàva in Sinhala Buddhism."
Sri Lanka became a foothold of the Dhamma-Vinaya Tradition. Suvannabhumi was also a foothold where Thera-vada Buddhism thrives presently.

Vibhajjavādi Dhamma Paṭisambhidā-ñāṇa

Analytical Knowledge (Paṭisambhidā-ñāṇa) allows the arahants to reason and teach in detail analytically. Understanding the nature of the Teachings of the Buddha and the Sangha, Venerable Moggaliputta Tissa Thera described them as Vibhajjavādis. That is Theravada, the doctrine of the arahants. Dhamma paṭisambhidā-ñāṇa is the ability to analytically and in detail explain the nature of reality.
The Buddha as an awakened sage is neither a theorist nor a philosopher. Theravada is not philosophy. The Buddha is an arahant.
The Buddha's disciples, who are also arahants, know the Four Noble Truths through their own observation and release from delusion. Knowing modern views and modern science is not their task. They are not philosophers and philosophical scholars. They do not claim to possess omniscience.

Titthiya Sutta (Sectarians):

[The Buddha advises the monks,] you should answer those wanderers of other sects in this way, ‘Friends, passion carries little blame and is slow to fade. Aversion carries great blame and is quick to fade. Delusion carries great blame and is slow to fade. [Thanissaro Bhikkhu]

3.1. Kaccānagotta Sutta (Right View)

Kaccānagotta Sutta Pali:

‘sammādiṭṭhi sammādiṭṭhī’ti, bhante, vuccati. Kittāvatā nu kho, bhante, sammādiṭṭhi hotī’’ti?... ‘‘‘Sabbaṃ atthī’ti kho, kaccāna, ayameko anto. ‘Sabbaṃ natthī’ti ayaṃ dutiyo anto. Ete te, kaccāna, ubho ante anupagamma majjhena tathāgato dhammaṃ deseti – ‘avijjāpaccayā saṅkhārā; saṅkhārapaccayā… L. Feer, Saṃyutta-nikāya,V. 16 —[copied from Early Buddhism: A New Definition (Vijitha Kumara, page 130)]

• sammādiṭṭhi : right view
• What is the right view, bhante?

Sarvāstivāda

Sarvāstivāda means "those who claim that everything exists" [...] the Sarvāstivādins suggest that "everything," that is all conditioned factors (dharma), "exist" and can exert causal efficacy in the three time periods of the past, present, and future. [Sarvastivada And Mulasarvastivada (Encyclopedia.com)]

The main Sarvāstivādi concept 'all dhamma exist in all three times' was familiar to the Buddha, not because He taught it, but because He rejected it.

'Everything exists': That is one extreme. 'Everything doesn't exist': That is a second extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle: From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications (saṅkhārā). From fabrications as a requisite condition comes consciousness. [Kaccānagotta Sutta (SN 12:15) (Thanissaro Bhikkhu)]

Somehow, that concept, despite the Buddha's famous rejection, came to associate with Buddhism once again, not because the Buddha taught it, but the outsiders made it as if the Buddha accepted it.
We, too, must reject the notion of 'everything exists' just the way the Buddha rejected it. The rejection is also present in the paṭicca samuppāda, as He explains:

Imagine two sheaves of reeds the one leaning against the other. In the same way consciousness depends on named-shapes, named shapes depend on consciousness [...] birth depends on existing, aging and death depend on birth — the coming into existence of upset, grief, lamentation, pain and misery. [...] If, however, friend, I were to remove one of those sheaves of reeds one would fall down if I were to remove the other the other would fall down. — SN 5.67 [Dependant Uprising, Downbound Dependent Own-making (Dependent Origination, Conditioned Genesis, The Causal Law),

The Paṭicca Samuppāda provides two sheaves of reeds that support each other, but one of them can be removed to topple them both. When they are toppled, we cannot say everything exists. The Buddha's Dhamma, which shows us the four Paramattha, is nothing like a "dharma theory" that was created by the Sarvāstivādis.
Kaccānagotta Sutta continues:

[The Buddha:] By & large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by (takes as its object) a polarity, that of existence & non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, 'non-existence' with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, 'existence' with reference to the world does not occur to one. "By & large, Kaccayana, this world is in bondage to attachments, clingings (sustenances), & biases

3.2. Vibhajyavāda & The Present Dhamma

The Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia:

vibhajyavāda; A school of thought doctrinally opposed to the Sarvāstitvāda. holds that the present dharma-s alone exist. However, some among them like the followers of the Kāśyapīya, concede that the past karma that have not yet given fruit (adatta-phala) can also be said to exist.

Here is a part of Magganga Dipani by Ledi Sayadaw:

kammassakata samma-ditthi Sabbesatta kammadayada, kamayoni, kammabandhu kammappatisarana yam kammam karissanti kalyanam va papakam va tassadayada bhavissanti. Sabbe satta kammassaka: There exist such properties as elephants, horses, vehicles, cattle, fields, buildings, gold, silver, jewels, etc. Those properties can be said to belong to us in the present existence before we pass away. But when we pass away those properties do not accompany us beyond death. They are like properties which we borrow for some time for our use. They are liable to destruction during the present existence. As those properties which beings possess do not accompany them to their new existences, they cannot be claimed as properties belonging to those beings. The Buddha therefore said, 'sabbe satta kammassaka.' The only property of all beings that accompanies them is their own volitional action... [Ledi Sayadaw explains the entire thing here.]

• Venerable Mogok Sayadaw warned us to avoid sassata ditthi, the belief in permanence (nicca), 'eternity-belief'. Based on his explanation: A kamma (action) exists while it is happening between the start and the end. For example, feeding an animal: this action exists only while that animal is fed. That action cannot exist before and after that animal is fed. However, as if following the doers, the potential effect of certain wholesome and unwholesome kamma (volition) is inevitable.

Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta

Furthermore, bhikkhus, this is the dukkha ariya·sacca: jāti is dukkha, jarā is dukkha (sickness is dukkha) maraṇa is dukkha, association with what is disliked is dukkha, dissociation from what is liked is dukkha, not to get what one wants is dukkha; in short, the five upādāna'k'khandhas are dukkha.

• The Buddha introduced the Dukkha Sacca in His first sermon.
• Vedayita-dukkha: The truth is dukkha are birth, aging, death, association with what is disliked, dissociation from what is liked, and not to get what one wants.
• Bhayattha-dukkha: The truth is the constant fear of these dukkha is also dukkha.
• Due to the past wholesome and unwholesome kamma, one gets birth, aging, death, etc.
• However, Beings born in the sugati-loka do not suffer from birth, aging, and bodily pain (kayika-dukkha), as these dukkha do not exist there.
• The past unwholesome kamma do not affect these beings during their existence in sugati-loka, especially the arupa-brahmas.
• The Buddha understood the followers of Nigaṇṭha (the Nigaṇṭhas) did not know the existence of the sugati-loka. Thus, they were speculators who fell into sassatavada (eternalism) and ucchedavada (nihilism/annihilation). Details can be read here: The Buddhist Critique of Sassatavada and Ucchedavada: The Key to a proper Understanding of the Origin and the Doctrines of early Buddhism (Y. Karunadasa).
• In the Devadaha Sutta, the Buddha pointed out the mistakes of these Nigaṇṭhas.

Devadaha Sutta (the Law of Kamma)

[MN 101] “‘So, friends, it seems that you don’t know that you existed in the past, and that you did not not exist… you don’t know what is the abandoning of unskillful qualities and the attainment of skillful qualities in the here & now. That being the case, it is not proper for you to assert that, “Whatever a person experiences—pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain—all is caused by what was done in the past. Thus, with the destruction of old [kamma] through asceticism, and with the non-doing of new actions, there will be no flow into the future. With no flow into the future, there is the ending of [kamma]. With the ending of [kamma], the ending of [dukkha]. With the ending of [dukkha], the ending of feeling. With the ending of feeling, all [dukkha] will be exhausted.” (Thanissaro Bhikkhu)

• If the present is completely conditioned by the past [kamma] and if we could not break that condition to do new kamma in a condition not determined by the past, then at this present we could not even do anything intentionally (kamma) as our action would be restrained by the past kamma.

A Vibhajjavādi cannot accept Sarvāstivāda's notion of the three times:

all dharmas exist in the past, present and future, the "three times".

Past and future exist at this present moment implies they merge with the present time. Yesterday and tomorrow are today and they are so every day without meaning one can live yesterday and tomorrow today. If one's injury healed yesterday, both injury and healing exist today, right now. For three times doctrine (Sarvāstivāda), dead people are dead, alive and exist at all stages and every moment of time. Even though one has reborn countless times, one still lives in the past lives and also the future lives. One has lived the past infinity and the future infinity. As the future has also been lived, there is no way to change the future, so what will happen will happen — according to the God one believes. After one passes away, one will relive the same life again and again countless times in the past and the future. Someone who will become a Buddha is already a Buddha. Someone who will go to hell is already in hell while living this life as a human.
Rational and irrational people, including the physicists, philosophers, writers and filmmakers, took the doctrine of three times seriously and imagined time machines.
Assuming kamma (action) exists constantly (past, present and future) constitutes sassata ditthi (eternalism). Assuming actions and their effects do not exist constitutes ahetukaditthi (view of uncausedness) — see the 8th question on page181 of this book: Milindapanha: kammaphalaatthibhavapanha. King Milinda asked many questions about kamma. The answers of wisemen and philosophers of the time did not satisfy the king. He got the answers only when he met Venerable Nagasena; see A SEARCH FOR THE LEARNED (TALENT HUNT), pages12-16.
Venerable Nagasena explained how the future is yet to exist:

Can anyone point out the fruits that a tree has not yet produced, saying: “Here they are, there they are”?” [See 3.2. QUESTION REGARDING VALIDITY OF FRUIT AND RESULT OF WHOLESOME AND UNWHOLESOME]

Real is the present; the past is gone; the future is yet to exist. That is the knowledge of the arahants.
Every action has the process of existence: birth, decay and death. Understanding anicca can abandon sakkaya ditthi.
Sakkaya ditthi is a sense with which one perceives a nama-rupa complex as me, you, he, she, it, cat, dog and so on.

Right View according to the Sakyamuni

The Buddha and His disciples visited Vesāli, the capital of the Vajjians, several times, and many arahants were made there. Saccaka, who the Buddha addressed as Aggivessana, was a famous Jain teacher of the Licchavi rājās. They accompanied Saccaka when he went to challenge the Buddha. There a famous debate on anattavada occurred, as recorded in the famous Cula-Saccaka Sutta.

[The Buddha asked,] “Well, Aggivessana, when you say that [rūpa] is self, do you have power over that [rūpa]. Can you have your [rūpa] be any different than it is?” Saccaka could not answer and remained silent [...] “Released they are endowed with unsurpassed Right View, unsurpassed practice, and unsurpassed release. Released, they honor and respect the Tathagata in this manner: The Buddha teaches the Dhamma for awakening (to Four Noble Truths), the Buddha teaches the Dhamma to develop restraint, the Buddha teaches the Dhamma for developing tranquility, the Buddha teaches the Dhamma for ending samsara (ignorance). The Buddha teaches the Dhamma for total unbinding.” (John Haspel).

• [rūpa]: The four mahabhuta (solid, liquid, gas, heat), each changes according to its nature.
• Self (atta) means the owner or arbitor of the five aggregates of clinging.
• do you have power over that [rūpa]: None of the five aggregates is self (atta).
• Vesāli became a Buddhist capital after the debate. But not all the Nigaṇṭhas were happy. Their attack on the Buddha and the Sangha never stopped. They succeeded only after a few centuries later.

3.3. QUESTION REGARDING VALIDITY OF FRUIT AND RESULT OF WHOLESOME AND UNWHOLESOME

(kammaphalaatthibhavapanha page181) 8. King Milinda said: “If, O Venerable Nagasena, with the (present) Mind-body-complex (nama-rupa) either wholesome or unwholesome kammical actions were performed where will the fruit and result of those actions (kamma) be located?” “The fruit and result of kammical actions tend to follow the Mind-body-complex, O King, like a shadow that never leaves it.” (So replied the Elder.) “Now what do you think, O King? Can any one point out the fruits which a tree has not yet produced, saying: “Here they are, there they are”?” (So asked the Elder.) “Not possible it is, O Venerable One.” (So replied the king.)

• Shadow means the potential. As long as the tree exists, the potential of fruiting of that tree exists. The fruits will be on that tree, not elsewhere. The potential never leaves the tree.
• Mahayana created the concept of Ālayavijñāna (storehouse consciousness).
  • Ālayavijñāna is also regarded as the store house of vāsanas and karmic tendencies (vāsanāparibhāvita and sarvabījaka). However, it is neither the permanent identity of a person nor a form of collective unconscious. Continuous build-up and discharge of karmic tendencies cause the ever-changing nature of ālaya-vijñāna. [Wisdom Lib]
• Compare ālayavijñāna with indestructable buddha-nature. Buddha-nature is also vijñāna/citta. Awareness is Buddha-nature.
  • [Breakthrough Sermon, Bodhidharma:] The Sutra of the Ten Stages says, “In the body of mortals is the indestructible buddha-nature [...] Our buddha-nature [the self-nature of Buddha] is awareness: to be aware and to make others aware. To realize awareness is liberation.
  • be­cause garbha (which nearly always means 'embryo' in Sanskrit) is translated by ts'ang, ( = 'womb'; lit. 'storehouse'), a certain vacuum was created in the Chinese vocabulary which the terms fo hsing and fo hsin ( = buddha-citta) neatly filled. [Rawlinson, Andrew. "The Ambiguity of the Buddha-Nature Concept in India and China."]
  • Ālayavijñāna belongs to or a part of buddha-nature (buddha-citta).
  • According to the concept of citta-matrata

THE NIYAMA-DIPANI The Manual of Cosmic Order Mahathera Ledi Sayadaw

[Kamma-Niyama] The moral order--Kamma (action) is that by which men execute, deeds, good or evil, meritorious or the opposite. What is it ? It is volition (cetana), moral or immoral. We are told in the Pali texts: 'By action, Bhikkhus, I mean volition. It is through having willed that a man does something in the form of deed, speech or thought.'

The nama-rupa process, which occurs according to the law of paticcasamuppada (Pratītya-Samutpāda), is like a tree; See 2.3. PATICCASAMUPPADA. The nama-rupa process, which occurs due to the niyama(s) other than kamma niyama, is outside the law of paticcasamuppada but not unrelated.

Naked Kassapa

The ascetic Acelakassapa put forward four theories of origination of suffering and wanted to know Buddha’s answer to them. [Dependent Origination and the Buddhist Theory of Relativity (Kottegoda S. Warnasuriya (page 154)]
"'He who performs the act also experiences [the result]' — what you, Kassapa, first called 'suffering caused by oneself' — this amounts to the Eternalist[3] theory. [Acela Sutta: Naked Kassapa]

An action was done by a doer, not someone else. However, the doer and the action (kamma) can exist only during the action is being done, not before or after. The doer happens to exist because of doing. The doer and doing exists at the same time. Action and doer don't exist outside doing or before or after the action is done.
Saying there is no doer falls into ahetukavada and probably uccedavada, too, as 'no doer' means 'nobody is responsible' to take the consequences. When the action is done, it becomes a seed that grows into a tree (as nama-rupa process) according to the paticcasamuppada law. The fruiting or consequences of volition (kamma/seed) will appear on this tree.

Of Causal Genesis [Mahathera Ledi Sayadaw (contrinues)]

Paticcasamuppada is Causal Genesis or Dependent Origination (Process). The key words are depdendent and process. The process depends on the action done by the doer, which no longer exists by the next stage of the process. For example, a sound comes out after the drummer hit a drum with a drumstick. The birth of the sound is dependent on the hitting process, but the sound itself is independent to be in the law of impermanence—no butterfly-effect here.
That is how things exist, but not "everything exists".

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Synopsis:
Juliette Contzen is a lazy, good-for-nothing princess. Overshadowed by her siblings, she's left with little to do but nap, read … and occasionally cut the falling raindrops with her sword. Spotted one day by an astonished adventurer, he insists on grading Juliette's swordsmanship, then promptly has a mental breakdown at the result.
Soon after, Juliette is given the news that her kingdom is on the brink of bankruptcy. At threat of being married off, the lazy princess vows to do whatever it takes to maintain her current lifestyle, and taking matters into her own hands, escapes in the middle of the night in order to restore her kingdom's finances.
Tags: Comedy, Adventure, Action, Fantasy, Copious Ohohohohos.
Chapter 239: Standing Start
A wine bottle rolled against the side of my boot.
Amidst a gallery of stunned faces and open mouths, it was easily the second most lively thing here.
The first was a clockwork doll clutching at her stomach in pain.
“Ahahahha~ ahahaha~ ahah … uck … ack … ughh … ahahaha~”
I pursed my lips.
Still, I said nothing.
For one thing, this was precisely what happened when one ate the mouldy cinnamon rolls combined with any grass growing by the side of the road. If Apple refused to eat something, then so should she.
But for another–
“What … What is this … ?”
It was because the first response was reserved for the baroness.
Her words came out in a quivering tone, matching the disbelief upon her face.
Frankly, she had to do better than that.
Only the wine from the bottle I nudged away dribbled into the soil. And also the line of drool from a comatose farmer. But I didn’t want to think about that.
Still, it was an excellent benchmark. Until her tears could properly overpower the sour aroma from the Château de Riaré Hensoise, I would deem her bawling to be incomplete.
She had a long way to go.
“How … How are you still …” she began, slowly rising from her seat. “This … This is impossible–”
I offered a tidy smile alongside a flick of my hair, relishing in the moonlight adorning my figure.
“I agree. It shouldn’t be possible. But I assure you, my skin is 100% natural.”
“E-Excuse me … ?”
“No magical enchantments. No unicorn elixirs. No witchly glamors. Just a healthy sleep schedule of however many hours I desire and a diet of fresh strawberry shortcakes.”
The baroness mouthed silently at my secrets being revealed.
A strange way of offering her gratitude. Other princesses hounded my door for this knowledge. Given her pale, blotchy skin and lips as dry as a pond in a desert, she should be pleading for more.
Instead, she pointed at the fallen drunk beside us.
“This … This shouldn’t be possible … no, wait … the clockwork doll … did she–”
She suddenly snapped towards Coppelia, her eyes widening.
“Uuh … ahaha … ugh, it hurts ... ahaha … it hurts so much … ahaha … my tummy … aha … oh no … I’m … I’m seeing daisies … aha … I … ugh … I think I need help …”
Coppelia hugged her stomach, writhing like a freshly hatched caterpillar. Her eyes darkened as hiccups of laughter assailed her defeated form.
The baroness pursed her lips.
Then, she turned to Renise instead.
“Did you–”
“A-Amazing! … I … I have no idea what you did … but it wasn’t just wonderful … it was beautiful! The colours! The warmth! It was like a rainbow come to life!”
With a smile worthy of any attendant, the maid brought her hands together in polite applause. Naturally, to be praised for my brushwork was nothing new to me. Nor was the sight of stars shining in her eyes with greater brightness than any in the night sky.
Why, that even came whenever I left my bedroom.
“You … how did … how did you defeat him … ?”
The strands of the baroness’s golden hair began to frizzle as she turned towards me. All I saw were her tonsils. Bright red and healthy. She should be pleased.
“This was … this was no common man … do you know who he is … ?”
Without offering a chance to ignore her, she stamped a foot, pointing at the fallen drunk with maddened jabs. The man offered no defence, now as spent and drained as the bottle beside him.
I raised a brow.
“Indeed, I do. He’s a farmer who made poor life choices. And between leaving his farm and offering his pitchfork to an overly ambitious baroness, the greater was you. My congratulations on being the superior mistake. I acknowledge your triumph.”
Bwam.
The baroness promptly slapped her palms down on the table.
“This man … is Willem of Hagel,” she said, her teeth gritted together. “A man desperate and cursed.”
“Yes, well, to be a peasant is a dire thing. But it could be worse. At least he isn’t nobility.”
A mouth further widened before me.
Indeed, this was a terrible time to realise her affliction. But I was no famed angel of healing for nothing. There was a cure for ambition. And it involved copious amounts of tears.
I was still waiting.
“There is no world in which you should have been able to defeat him … not if half the tales about him prove true … he is a famed opponent … all the while you are … you are …”
Suddenly, her eyes left my face for the very first time.
No longer feeling that my cheeks were in danger of being poked, she swept her eyes upon my person, as though hoping to find some blemish to signify I was as false as a field of corn.
She stopped at the sword by my side.
And also–
“A copper ring,” she said softly.
Suddenly, my 29th house of cards I was subtly constructing collapsed.
… T-The ring!
The blot on my finger! The insidious badge of shame! The symbol of the Adventurer’s Guild!
Why, I’d taken it for granted that my masterful disguise was impervious! But this was no ordinary noblewoman I was seated across!
This … This was one I’d previously sat across before!
I’d made a terrible mistake!
I was mesmerising! A beautiful princess as charming as I was modest!
There was utterly no scenario in which I’d be forgotten!
I … I should have removed the copper ring!
“O-Oho … ohoho … w-what copper ring?” I said, my hands vanishing below the table at a speed con artists could only nod at. “Ah, do you refer to the ruby inlaid ring I often carry on my hand? The one which changes colour depending on the longitude and latitude? In that case, you may very well have briefly spied something which resembled a copper hue. But it is in fact a thing of unparalleled beauty and craftsmanship. Not a disgraceful copper ring.”
The baroness slowly looked up at me, her eyes blinking.
“No. I wasn’t mistaken. I … I recognise that ring. It is a copper ring, the same size and shape as those worn by … adventurers.”
My mouth widened in horror.
At once, I immediately sought a plant pot or a heavy book. Something to immediately erase the past few seconds of her memory.
Why … if she knew my secret, then the shame would haunt me all the way until I’d found something weighing at least equivalent to a standard hardback!
“I see,” she mumbled, as much to herself as me. “I understand now …”
The baroness removed her palms from the table.
She stood up straight, a hard expression upon her face. One which calculated with each passing moment the optimal way to exploit this devastating information.
Then, she took in a deep breath–just as I began assembling the playing cards into a thick pile.
“… it must be a legendary artifact.”
As I began eyeing her temple … I blinked in non-understanding.
“Excuse me?”
She nodded, her frown harsh enough to permanently crease her skin.
“To wear such a plain, ugly and shameful ring … one which utterly demeans your history, your worth and your pride, destroying any semblance of dignity you possess–”
My hand went to my stomach, struck by as much pain as Coppelia had experienced in a single moment.
“–indeed, to wear a ring so easily mistaken as one belonging to adventurers, the vermin of the world … it must be a truly terrifying artifact.”
I blinked.
And then–
“Ohhho … ohoohho! You … You see the truth of it!”
The baroness squeezed her fists by her side.
“I knew it.”
I nodded, my bangs bouncing against my forehead.
“I-Indeed … ! This ring I carry on me … it is a masterful item of supreme quality, passed down along generations of my family! Why, its appearance matching those of rings worn by adventurers is no coincidence! Theirs are based on this very design! Although they have since tarnished it, it was forged back in the first days of the kingdom when copper was greater than gold! Poured within it is knowledge now lost to time! A power beyond compare, called upon from the depths of the Royal Vault!”
The baroness sucked in a hateful breath.
“Then that explains it,” she said with bitterness ringing throughout her voice. “You were able to defeat such a powerful adversary through the use of your family’s ancient heirlooms.”
“Indeed, this powerful ring with a rare ability I cannot disclose defeated a terrifying farmer! Therefore, there’s no need for you to relay any suggestion that I’m anything but a princess, as far removed from the Adventurer’s Guild as hygiene is to their members!”
The baroness gave no response.
A respite which lasted far too short.
“... I see, then it means the plan continues. Different, yes. But I’ll not be deterred.”
She smiled, the familiar sight of aristocratic opportunism mixed with an utter denial of facts shining within her grey eyes.
I could only react with horror.
“Plan?” I replied, convinced she was well and truly several sandwiches short of a picnic. “Do you mean the plan currently lying in a fallen heap beside us? Did you not just say I defeated your farmer? Your only plan now is to decide which part of the ground you wish to offer your forehead to.”
The baroness shook her head with renewed confidence.
“I think not. To defeat Willem of Hagel, you must have expended every effort you had available. Not a crumb of power could be spared, for to underestimate him would have resulted in your certain loss. Meaning …”
Without hesitation, she gave a multipurpose wave of her hand.
“... You’ve nothing left but a sword you cannot wield, and two retainers against all of mine. One of whom is incapacitated. The other a maid.”
She continued to keep her hand raised. Her simple call to arms.
It took several moments before she cared to even look around her.
A sad thing.
If she had, she would have realised the curiosity of her hoodlums was less than their prudence.
She would have noticed the eyes without loyalty, seeing only the fallen figure of a drunk they’d been led to believe was more than a farmer now watering the ground with his drool.
And she would have noticed the state of her dress, as dishevelled as her ambitions as those she relied upon slinked away in search of newer gutters to inhabit, following instincts she could learn as the last of their feet shuffled into the darkness.
The baroness paled.
It was far too early for that. She had no idea Apple was currently resting in her tavern, and wouldn’t be helping her haul all of the goods which needed delivering to a place less damp than here.
But I could sooth her forthcoming backache with a smile, at least for the assistance already provided.
“You have my gratitude,” I said, brushing a speck of … countryside from my lap. “For so long as the nobility continues to concoct slapdash schemes with no hope of success, the kingdom can continue to assign blame on you when all else goes wrong. When the mobs come calling and heads start rolling, it ensures a steady queue of necks can be offered before ours are reached. That is why the nobility continues to exist, you see, despite the ceaseless treason. So allow me to offer a word of advice when next you wish to survive in a position of responsibility. When fleeing, the best defence isn’t to run faster–it’s to trip the person beside you. And this means better hiring practices.”
I glanced pointedly around me.
All this empty space and not even a single eyepatched second-in-command to use as a distraction? An amateur mistake. One the baroness now realised as her mouth opened wordlessly, the realisation of her solitude only now dawning upon her.
Yet all it invited was a newly wrought defiance.
“I do not mean to flee,” she said, her fists tightly clenched. “I am Arisa Sandholt. And even should I be captured here, you would not be afforded a night’s rest. I am not alone. Whether tonight or tomorrow, this kingdom will fall. I am not alone in planning its demise.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Oh, please. Planning my kingdom’s demise is what everyone does.”
“What?”
“If it’s not being actively planned, it’s because someone’s in the middle of planning how to formulate a plan. And then once they’ve finished planning, they wonder why their plan didn’t work as planned. This is not a cause for concern. It’s a sign the world is still spinning the correct direction.”
The baroness feigned a dignified silence.
It was far too late, of course. By default, nobility had no dignity.
Still, I accepted the effort, and filled the silence with a tidy clap of my hands.
“Now, since you’ve no intention of fleeing, you can be useful instead. I’ll require a full inventory of your stock. I intend to requisition every single item you have in your possession. Every grain. Every crown. And every odd piece of tableware, carpet, candleholder and painting you might have.”
I pointed at the barn. A tragic thing to requisition. But if I was fortunate, it’d grow lacquered tiles and bay windows in the short steps between here and there.
Suddenly, the baroness’s eyes widened. The needless defiance dropped alarmingly from her face.
“Wait … what do you mean by that?”
I paused for a moment, puzzled by her reaction.
This was hardly the complicated part.
“I mean exactly what I mean. This should come as no surprise. I will be emptying every corner of the property you’ve misappropriated, including whatever manner of tunnels you’ve carved for your use. Rest assured, I’ll be employing the talents of my retainers extensively. With or without your cooperation, every single inch of your abode will be inspected by myself for the Royal Treasury’s benefit.”
She blinked between Renise and Coppelia. Although one was dressed as a maid and the other now appeared to be napping on the ground, their skills when it came to matters of unearthing valuables in my kingdom’s underbelly was not one I doubted.
Nor, from the way the baroness gulped, did she.
“I can do it,” she said suddenly.
I looked at her in confusion, uncertain what ploy this was.
“... Excuse me? Do what?”
“The items of value. I can bring them out. There’s no need to personally see to such a thing yourself.”
“While I’m in full agreement, I can hardly trust your reliability in this manner. And besides, I’ll hardly be playing the mule. I shall be supervising while closely assessing every item.”
Once more, the tonsils came out.
An appalling disregard of decorum. There was only one time that nobility was permitted to look so horrified in my presence. And that’s if they were copying my own after I discovered a list of marriage suitors posing as a napkin beneath the dessert spoon again.
“E-Even so … as the one who wronged you, I insist on not troubling a princess any further. If you give me a few moments, I can acquire the most important valuables for you in a fraction of the time you’d spend on finding them.”
“A few moments to hide them, you mean. No, I’m afraid that anything you wish to stuff beneath a floorboard will need to be appropriately examined first.”
I leaned away in mild alarm as a bead of sweat ran down the baroness’s face.
A moment later–
She finally did what only someone in her position could.
Adhering to the instincts of all nobility, she swept up her dress and suddenly dashed away.
Except it wasn’t towards the dark forest, to be lost amidst the shadows and the jaws of whatever awaited her there. It was back towards the barn.
I watched as she stumbled several times before even reaching the steps.
“... A desperate sight, no?” I said, with a sad shake of my head. “To throw away all semblance of the image she’d hoped to craft. Now she flees like a frightened towngirl. She should know that escape is now impossible.”
Beside me, Renise let out a hum.
Far from chasing after the baroness, she collected the pack of cards I’d assembled for memory wiping purposes. She began to build a house of cards.
I looked at her in puzzlement. She gave a strangely pained smile in reply.
“I believe we can offer her a few moments.”
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Hello, so I’ve been very conflicted with my feelings for the past few weeks, basically to make a long story short my best friend of two years(M) and I have recently grown apart, being in the military I went on leave, i got to know him and see all of his flaws for the first time in person since I wasn’t really self aware back then to see it. I never really got to know him aside from us being interested in the same things but I noticed how he treats my friend(His current girlfriend, met them around the same timeframe). The reason this whole thing was brought up was since I give her advice on life and mental health issues that she’s been going through, I’ve been giving her advice on these things for around a month or so, she told me he was emotionally unavailable and that he wasn’t really there to talk to her about those things and when she tried she would get shut down and judged on the sensitive topics she was bringing up. This didn’t help for me because I’ve already been on a journey to become a better person and improving my mental health, This has resulted in me growing apart from most of my friends and it just recently hit me that I grew apart from him and not her.
About two days ago I got a text from her in regard to a conversation we had from a couple days before, she said that he didn’t want us talking about the deep/personal things that we’ve been talking about and that she should only be talking to him and only him about these things, she seems very conflicted since I’ve actually been helping her make progress and be better. Like I said she’s told him before that he isn’t emotionally available and not equipped to help her as well as her not believing in therapy, I feel like me not talking to her cuts off a person that she could talk to for things that are bothering myself and her mentally. For the point that he has on only talking to him and only him for things, I don’t agree with this mentality since it kinda gives the opportunity for an echo room to happen and for people to never have any outside opinions.
It’s gonna get a little more messy from here but while I was there he also recommended the three of us to sleep with each other and , the reason I say I’m not 100% in the right here is because I followed through thinking it would make him stop bringing it up and that it wouldn’t really change our relationship for the worst, which it kinda did. I don’t wanna say he was forcing my hand because I could’ve said no but at the time I just wanted to do what would make him happy and breed less tension between the three of us but it honestly just caused more problems. For some backstory he kinda forced her into this relationship since she was fresh off of a breakup and she felt that she couldn’t say no, so that already a red flag in my opinion. And when I was there he would constantly read our messages thinking that there was more going on and that I was texting her trying to break them up or something instead of helping her and giving advice. Another reason I will also say I was in the wrong though is that I did somewhat develop feelings for her overtime which she reciprocated. Idk it’s all just been hard to digest cause now me and her are in a weird situationship and they’re in an open relationship and he’s just controlling. I feel like I’m making the right decision pulling away but it’s really hard and I can only imagine how she feels right now.
How long should you wait when pulling away from someone so they can grow? Is it best that I’m trying to recover this relationship or is it just unsalvageable.

Hi All-
When looking for testosterone pellet information, I found very little documentation in the form of journals and regular cadence check-ins. The one I found was immensely helpful to me, and I wanted to return the favor. I am six weeks into my first pellet therapy and very happy with the decision to do it.
Prior to the pellet, I was really suffering from massive amounts of brain fog, and I could hardly focus. I had very low energy, no libido (no desire at all), I was unhappy, cranky, and cried easily.
My biggest fear going into this was having a ravenous libido (as some have experienced). I let my doctor know this and we started with a healthy but moderate dose.
I've tried to provide as much detail as possible, but happy to answer any questions.
46 yo
158 lbs, Current T level of 18 (prior test was 11), estrogen is in the normal range
Biote 125mg on 3/29/24
3/29/24 - Day one
The procedure was quick and easy, I was nervous and tense, but it was painless.
No shower for 24 hrs, no soaking for 3 days.
Also taking DIM 150mg once per day (also prescribed a supplement for ADK and B12 but these are unrelated to the T pellet)
Was tendesore at insertion point for a few days but nothing major.
4/5 - 1 week update
Sick for a few days this week (unrelated), so this may impact my overall experience. I haven’t felt any different for the most part.
I rubbed my eyes (thanks to allergies) and lost some eyelashes and brow hairs. it seemed to be more than normal, which could be a tiny side effect, but maybe not. I did notice a few small pimples over the week, but I’m also in my week of menstruation.
I haven’t gained or lost weight, no mood changes.
Still a tiny bit of tenderness at the insertion spot, but it’s very minimal. The incision is completely healed from the outside.
I haven’t been consistent with the DIM supplement due to illness, but have restarted after a few days off.
My doctor did tell me that it may take a few weeks to start to feel the effects of the testosterone.
4/12 - 2 week update
Allergies took over and I had a bad couple of days with extremely low energy. Went to bed at 9pm one night, and the next day had the worst hot flash of my life (beet red from chest to face for a solid 45 minutes.
My weight gain has been minimal but a bummer. I have gained 3 lbs and currently weigh 160.
No change in sexual desire, or energy that I’ve noticed yet.
I met briefly with my doctor, who said I should be feeling it by now, but I’m not. Maybe it's due to a couple of weeks of not-so-great health.
4/19 - 3 week update
I’m starting to notice some changes. In general, my energy seems to be slightly increased. I seem to wake up a bit easier in the mornings. I feel more motivated in general, and more capable of letting go when bad things happen.
I noticed that the mild vaginal dryness I was experiencing is gone. There is no real noticeable change in desire (yet), but I will say that even the slight increase in energy and ability to once again self-lubricate makes me feel more open to the idea of sex.
My weight has leveled off and I have dropped half a lb since the week prior.
5/5 - 5 weeks update
No changes from week 3. Feeling a bit of motivation and more energy to keep going during the day. The biggest change so far has been a decrease in my brain fog. I have clearer thoughts in general and fewer days spent lost to brain fog. I have noticed that the severe breast swelling and tenderness I typically experience ~2 weeks before my period has not happened since being on testosterone. It’s only been 5 weeks, which means I’ve only moved through one cycle, so this may change, but an observation for now. There are no other changes in my cycle to note, but because of the Mirena IUD, I do not typically have periods where I bleed (but I have had a handful of breakthrough bleeding in the last year).
I’ll be going in this week for my 5 week (midpoint) bloodwork and I’m very curious to see what my T levels have balanced out to and talk through what my next dose may be.
5/13 Check-up
160.5 lbs, Testosterone 195!!
Great check-in with my doctor. My testosterone is in a great range at 195. I feel good. Not bad. Thats something worth celebrating! Nothing earth-shattering, but I feel so much better in general. Most days I wake up feeling ready for the day (and waking up is a bit easier), there are fewer brain fog days, my libido has come back (YES!), and I feel much more able to focus and get things done. No breast swelling pre-cycle as I had before, and much less dense fibrous tissue as well (from what I can tell). I think I may have noticed a decrease in inflammation in my joints, but I can’t be sure just yet.
My emotions feel much more in check. In the last few years, I was referred to as a "crier," which made me very self-conscious. Now, when there is conflict or some sort of upset, it's much easier to keep this in check. I still get weepy occasionally; it's just easier to manage. Crying is healthy. I don't not want to cry; I just want the ability to have a bit more control over it.
No side effects other than a few lbs of weight gain (which I’ve read could be water weight and may go away), but I’m fine with this given the other results.
Overall thoughts: I’m really happy with the results. The energy boost is subtle but noticeable after a few weeks. Keeping a journal has definitely helped me check in with myself and take note. I would say this option is worth exploring. Prior to the pellet i tried the gel, but was not happy at all with the results. This is clearly a very personal choice. Gel or injections may be right for others, but pellets work for me.
Honestly, I feel like I'm back to the me I used to be. It's really nice!
I scheduled my next pellet insertion for another 6 weeks out. We’ll continue to monitor levels throughout the year.
I hope this helps others make a more informed decision!

I’ve (F36) been with my boyfriend (M34) for 2.5 years, long distance. In the beginning, obviously things were great. However, early on, I started to see some red flags.
He would lie about the stupidest things…things that didn’t even make sense to lie about. For example, I had visited him and made up a bunch of breakfast sandwiches for him to take to work. After I had gone home, he called me one morning saying that the sandwiches were great. He verbatim said, “I had one while I was running around the house getting ready and another one while I was driving to work.” Later in the day, I said “so those sandwiches were good, huh?” He said “what? I told you I was rushing today. I didn’t have any time for breakfast.” It honestly really scared me, and we never got to the bottom of it. His final comment on the situation was “it worries me, I don’t remember saying any of that to you.”
For reference…he has had multiple head traumas due to abuse by his mom and her boyfriends, abuse by his stepdad, dirt bike accidents, getting kicked in the head by his horses, and when he was married, he mouthed off and got whacked in the head with a frying pan by his ex…
Anyway, he’s VERY generous due to his high paying job and supports me with $1000/month which I apply to my rent (which is $1750). The other day I texted him saying I was craving a margarita, and he immediately sent me money to go get myself one. I didn’t need the money, but the gesture was thoughtful.
But lately, he’s just been really sketchy, mean, and self centered.
Sketchy: During the day, he is great about letting me know where he’s going and what he’s doing, usually; come evening though, he will sometimes just fall off the face of the planet and I cannot get a hold of him. He claims he doesn’t hear my calls or texts but he has a watch which is connected to his phone, so I know he’s ignoring me. We’ve talked about it a lot but he just says that he doesn’t need to give me an update every 10 min. And it’s like, no, you don’t…but once every 2 hours should be doable.
Mean: Today I was just having a rough day accompanied by a terrible headache. I called him because I knew he was off work and I just wanted to see if talking with him could put me in a better mood. Regarding my headache, he threw in a quick “you’ll be fine” line. When I told him I was feeling depressed and sad that he never asks how I was doing (more about that later in the “self centered” section), he said “you always tell me! I don’t need to ask! You BOMBARD my phone with 20 messages about your day so there’s no need to ask! I’m not gonna text you every hour and be like ‘how are you?’ I haven’t done that since junior high!” First off…I do text him sometimes, sure, but I do not “bombard” him. And the first thing that came to mind when he said that to me, was ‘he’s insecure that I actually DON’T text or call near as much as I used to, so he’s making things up to make himself feel more important and needed’. I said “well do you prefer that I don’t text you during the day and just wait til you’re off work to talk?” He said “umm no. That’s a game. Don’t play games with me.” I thought it was a possible solution…
Self Centered: Today, he knew I had a long commute in very stressful traffic. Instead of asking how my drive was, he texted me that he had broken his truck window, followed by a picture. Honestly, he’s not great at responding to my messages, and since I was driving, I didn’t respond. He eventually called to tell me the WHOLE story in FULL detail, not once, but twice! This is very common. He will tell me a story, and then tell me the same exact story again. And if I say “oh you already told me that”, he gets angry! So I just have to listen and come up with a new reaction, otherwise he will say I’m being rude. It’s like, he just loves the attention from his stories.
Later on, we were talking about my work and I started to tell him a story. He thought he knew what I was going to say so he tried to finish my sentence. I gently said, “oh, no that isn’t what I was going to say.” He said “oh, well that’s what I’M going to say.” I responded with an “ohhhkay…” which caused him to loudly exhale and say “FINE, what were you going to say?! My God!”
He can really be so mean. And we’ve tried talking about it, which just results in him talking over me, and not listening to anything that I say.
It’s been about three months since we have seen each other and I’m actually supposed to head his way next week for his niece’s wedding.
I know that he will be working the whole time I am there with the exception of the day of the wedding, so we won’t have to spend a lot of time together. Pretty sad to say that.
I just feel like he’s such a broken person who has been through so much trauma in his life. He really does have a lot of amazing qualities, but I feel like I just see less and less of them. I pray about the relationship all the time, but is there a point that I need to leave and just let God handle him when he’s not in a relationship?

Everything that's needed for fertile life is pushed toward sea level. Bidirectionally. Falls downward if above water, or floats up from below or.
But either way, the things that settle there are the stuff of fertile, festering abundance. The edible and decomposing ingredients of all life as we know it.
Everything moves toward sea level because of pressure. Barometric pressure pushing down or buoyancy pushing up, that beautifully, magically, result in all necessary building blocks being available at the water's surface.
The things animals and plants and bacteria need to survive.
Which means not only that gravity is nothing more than pressure, but also that the rules of gravity flip around at the surface. And only some things.
All physical material has innate properties that cause them to respond in specific ways to this dual-pressure gravity system, depending on their value. Those with high nutritional and reproductive potential all seem to float or drift or splash back to the event horizon at sea level.
Dense matter like rocks, containing overly compact and therefore inaccessible ingredients of life, may be pushed down a mountain by atmospheric pressure, but they do not stop at the surface. If given the chance to find equilibrium at sea level, they sail right past, ignoring buoyant gravity, self-sorting away from the event horizon. Because rocks are not needed for procreation or sustenance. Usually.
Low density ingredients like gasses may float up through water, and keep on floating once they reach the surface. They continue up though the above-water pressure system’s “gravity,” taking their place at the top. And by being there, they contribute to the downward pressure we used to know as the only gravity.
But important, nascent things like seeds and decaying matter and land animals and edible fish all effortlessly float back up, to where they can participate in life. Right there at the event horizon’s fertile sphere, which falls exactly between underwater and above. The plane of existence between two gravities.
And this dual direction, dual gravity system that endlessly pushes everything within its grasp up or down until it has been processed again and again by the both pressure systems, this event horizon is where literally everything happens.
Which suggests that the most fertile place in the universe is the untapped event horizon. A black hole’s potential to become the next dual-gravity system.
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This is long I’m sorry! I really need guidance
I have been with my Q for 3 years and friends for 7. When I met him he was a functioning alcoholic. I helped him to get sober and every 6 months he relapses and sometimes he gets better after a day and sometimes it lasts weeks or months. This last time he’s been really bad and he drank for 3 months straight hard liquor bottles every day and chased it with more alcohol. He has never gotten any professional help when he gets sober it’s just him detoxing at home and stopping. He tried AA but didn’t like it and refuses to go. Anyway, after this last relapse things got really bad at home. He gets very disrespectful and he quit his job. I just helped him get a car because he had none for about ten years because of multiple DUI. He finally got one back and got his license cleared and didn’t even last seven days before he was drinking and driving… also I put the car in my insurance for him to save money. So of course I came to the location he was at and took the keys out of the running car. I towed it home and drove him home. That caused him to resent me and spiral further and call me all kinds of names. We live in a studio apartment so we have no space from each other and it got to be really bad so I kicked him out. He has only gotten worse since I kicked him out because he’s at his parents house his siblings they all drink over there. Throughout this time period of 3 months I have begged him to get help and talk to me or someone I never wanted it to come to this and he refuses and says he’s not ready. I told him my apartment is not a bar or a halfway house and he has to leave.. on day 3 I found him drooling on himself on a park bench I thought he was dead. It took so long of me trying and crying and begging to get to this point and I finally broke up with him and said if you don’t want help I don’t want to be in your life I can’t stand by and watch the man I love kill himself anymore. He blames me for everything and screams at me constantly when he is drinking and hides it all over the place. When he is sober he is so apologetic and loving but by the night he’s drunk again.. After being kicked out his sister called me asking me for his insurance information because he had to be sedated by police for fighting his brother when they were both wasted. They took him overnight to the ER for monitoring. The next day he calls me saying he went in for a detox and they were wrestling and it wasn’t really fighting.. He still wasn’t wanting any help so I blocked him. I said I can’t do this any longer. It’s been about 3 days of no contact and his mother calls me and said please can you ask him to go to rehab. So I felt bad and I called him again and broke my no contact and I even offered to take him and he actually accepted. So this morning I took him and he was truly saying the right things he even cried saying he finally is ready and needs help. I sat in the ER for 7 hours with him waiting for him to get up to the detox. He is committed to doing a detox, 28 day program and then counseling after. My worries are that if he leaves there and goes to his parents home he will be back in the same place that triggers him with his siblings. I’m also worried to bring him back home and he starts all over but I want him back I just don’t want to keep living in this vicious cycle for the rest of my life I would rather cut ties now while I already am heartbroken and miserable rather than keep hurting over and over. My question is do I give him another shot? I do love him with all my heart and when he is sober I would marry him in a heartbeat but when he is drinking I don’t love or even like that person. I tell him imagine if we had a baby like I try and picture my future and it is so blurry. I am 31 and don’t want to keep down this path I just want to know if there is hope please

Everything that's needed for fertile life is pushed toward sea level. Bidirectionally. Falls downward if above water, or floats up from below or.
But either way, the things that settle there are the stuff of fertile, festering abundance. The edible and decomposing ingredients of all life as we know it.
Everything moves toward sea level because of pressure. Barometric pressure pushing down or buoyancy pushing up, that beautifully, magically, result in all necessary building blocks being available at the water's surface.
The things animals and plants and bacteria need to survive.
Which means not only that gravity is nothing more than pressure, but also that the rules of gravity flip around at the surface. And only some things.
All physical material has innate properties that cause them to respond in specific ways to this dual-pressure gravity system, depending on their value. Those with high nutritional and reproductive potential all seem to float or drift or splash back to the event horizon at sea level.
Dense matter like rocks, containing overly compact and therefore inaccessible ingredients of life, may be pushed down a mountain by atmospheric pressure, but they not stop at the surface. If given the chance to find equilibrium at sea level, they sail right past, ignoring buoyant gravity, self-sorting away from the event horizon. Because rocks are not needed for procreation or sustenance. Usually.
Low density ingredients like gasses may float up through water, and keep on floating once they reach the surface. They continue up though the above-water pressure system’s “gravity,” taking their place at the top. And by being there, they contribute to the downward pressure we used to know as the only gravity.
But important, nascent things like seeds and decaying matter and land animals and edible fish all effortlessly float back up, to where they can participate in life. Right there at the event horizon’s fertile sphere, which falls exactly between underwater and above. The plane of existence between two gravities.
And this dual direction, dual gravity system that endlessly pushes everything within its grasp up or down until it has been processed again and again by the both pressure systems, this event horizon is where literally everything happens.
Which suggests that the most fertile place in the universe is the untapped event horizon. A black hole’s potential to become the next dual-gravity system.

ICBC has lunched a FREE online service to allow customers to look up a vehicle's status, helping them to make informed buying decisions when purchasing used vehicle. The vehicle status search launched today 2008-09-17 on icbc.com and works by entering the vehicle model year and vehicle identification number (VIN). After entering the VIN and vehicle model year online, customers are provided with the current status of the vehicle salvage, rebuilt, altered or normal. The status search provides the current status listed in the B.C. vehicle registry. Changes to a vehicle's status are reported by insurance companies, tow operators, and automobile recyclers to the Registrar of Motor Vehicle, which in BC is ICBC. ICBC provides vehicle licensing and vehicle registration services, including maintaining the vehicle registry, on behalf of the provincial government.
Salvage is the status is given to a vehicle that has been written off as a result of a crash, but has the potential to be repaired or reconstructed. The vehicle must be repaired and inspected before it can be licensed or REINSURED.
2022-11-14/1 comment by: Paul/Paul says: NO such search found at ICBC.com !!
2024-05-14/Search by me: NO matching result found at icbc.com?!!
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