why such huge veneration of science?

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On this particular experience, anhedonia is often associated with depression, but almost has a life of its own. I had it for a long while, with and without depression. I still get it occasionally, and on some level it's almost always with me now.

For those who don't know, anhedonia is the inability to get joy from things, even from the things you would ordinarily love (hobbies, family, beauty, sex, comedy, a good read, music, thinking.. whatever). According to what I've read, it's usually an indicator of depression, but I've noticed it at times when I wouldn't call myself depressed.

Sorry if that's OT, but as for the science of psychology, sometimes it helps to discover that what you're experiencing has a name and reading about it makes some sense of the experience. I think that's a big part of why any science is good - it helps us make sense of our world.

There is considerable evidence that dopamine has a core role in the brain reward system.66 Indeed, dopamine is released in animal models of behaviors that involve the brain reward system such as food intake or expectation, sex, and drug self-administration. More precisely, dopamine release from the nucleus accumbens, during exposure to a novel food, is modulated by various characteristics of the stimulus and motivational state.67

my experience of listening to music intensified like 100 times

And yes, science is starting to get a handle on the full experience, potential, lack of, and death of human emotions and empathy that commonly occurs among SOME HUMAN beings.

When I quit coffee, I got some temporary anhedonia but without depression. When it wore off, I regained my desire to look stuff up and found out that decreased dopamine will give you anhedonia. Quitting coffee gave me temporarily decreased dopamine (until my brain re-regulated). Perhaps anhedonia that isn't coupled with depression (always) and comes and goes might be from some sort of dopamine disregulation.

There's this:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181880/



I experienced anhedonia (for about 2 months) after quitting caffeine because my brain had rejiggered itself to need caffeine to give me sufficient dopamine to get excited about things. So I wasn't depressed but also not thrilled by stuff. Does coffee ever help when that (lack of) feeling hits?

As i said before, I also think about the distinction between emotion and emotional attachment.

This makes me think of how I once listened to a symphonic track while under the influence of cannabis and it was probably the richest music experience I've had. The second time I tried it didn't feel the same way. I guess that might be emotion. I quit using cannabis later so I haven't had a chance to try again. I have been looking for ways to achieve that increased appreciation or depth of perception of music without using drugs. I found this today in a customer review when checking out a book:



That was this book. They recommended this book to begin with so I ordered a copy of that. I have been looking into this kind of thing before in the mix of all kinds of things that I've been researching over the last year and a half. I think I also might have had a kundalini awakening one time.

Science ain't getting no handle in the slightest.
Emotions are no more than neurochemical variables really in line with mechanistic thinking.
Not all the variables are known and that is why medical science is only really in tune with some of humanity.

NOOOOOOOOOO

Not Mantak Chia

Read his books couple of decades ago, the microcosmic orbit iirc. Seriously, there is better.
Then you might as well delve into Taoism proper after which you can decide whether you still want to spend money on Mantak Chia books...

As i said before, I also think about the distinction between emotion and emotional attachment.

This makes me think of how I once listened to a symphonic track while under the influence of cannabis and it was probably the richest music experience I've had. The second time I tried it didn't feel the same way. I guess that might be emotion. I quit using cannabis later so I haven't had a chance to try again. I have been looking for ways to achieve that increased appreciation or depth of perception of music without using drugs. I found this today in a customer review when checking out a book:



That was this book. They recommended this book to begin with so I ordered a copy of that. I have been looking into this kind of thing before in the mix of all kinds of things that I've been researching over the last year and a half. I think I also might have had a kundalini awakening one time.

Does coffee ever help when that (lack of) feeling hits?

Actually science is making some progress, and one can start with a book called the 'Body Keeps Score', easily found by a Google search, if one desires to learn more.

What is better then? I have one book on Qigong but I wasn't impressed by the book.

I ended up in Qigong through my interest in spiritual taoism. That whole episode of my life ended with a mega psychotic episode because I didn't do the qigong right.
Anyway, this was the book

After that I sort of kept meeting the right people that taught me what needed to be taught at the time. There are some good vids on you tube too but ultimately the only way to really learn is of a teacher.
Have done lots of reading over the years too and will share some more links you might find interesting. To really understand what you are doing if you do qigong it will undoubtedly help to understand the chinese medical model

Web That Has No Weaver
Ling Shu
Dragon Rises Red Bird Flies

Got one really old book but good book somewhere upstairs that covers animal forms, will dig it out tomorrow and post the link.

That whole episode of my life ended with a mega psychotic episode

In this twilight zone, the individual is unwilling to consider solutions that could restore his vitality. He’s already opted for a lower level of life.

Dionysus

The god of wine and of an orgiastic religion celebrating the power and fertility of nature.

Osiris
[...]
He was also associated with the epithet Khenti-Amentiu, which means "Foremost of the Westerners" - a reference to his kingship in the land of the dead. As ruler of the dead, Osiris was also sometimes called "king of the living", since the Ancient Egyptians considered the blessed dead "the living ones"

And they followed [instead] what the devils had recited during the reign of Solomon. It was not Solomon who disbelieved, but the devils disbelieved, teaching people magic and that which was revealed to the two angels at Babylon, Harut and Marut. But the two angels do not teach anyone unless they say, "We are a trial, so do not disbelieve [by practicing magic]." And [yet] they learn from them that by which they cause separation between a man and his wife. But they do not harm anyone through it except by permission of Allah . And the people learn what harms them and does not benefit them. But the Children of Israel certainly knew that whoever purchased the magic would not have in the Hereafter any share. And wretched is that for which they sold themselves, if they only knew.

Judaism does not encourage the monastic ideal of celibacy and poverty. To the contrary—all of the Torah's Commandments are a means of sanctifying the physical world. As further disseminated through the teachings of the Yisrael Ba'al Shem Tov, the pursuit of permitted physical pleasures is encouraged as a means to "serve God with joy" (Deut. 28:47).

However, until the Destruction of the Second Temple, about two thousand years ago, taking Nazirite vows was a common feature of the religion. Nazirite Jews (in Hebrew: נזיר) abstained from grape products, haircuts, and contact with the dead.[17] However, they did not withdraw from general society, and they were permitted to marry and own property; moreover, in most cases a Nazirite vow was for a specified time period and not permanent.[18] In Modern Hebrew, the term "Nazir" is most often used to refer to non-Jewish monastics.

Given man's fallen nature, recreation, which is necessary to the human spirit, is forever falling into amusement, and amusement is forever falling into vice.

Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός gnostikos, "learned", from γνῶσις gnōsis, knowledge) describes a collection of ancient religions whose adherents shunned the material world created by the demiurge and embraced the spiritual world.[1] Gnostic ideas influenced many ancient religions[2] that teach that gnosis (variously interpreted as knowledge, enlightenment, salvation, emancipation or 'oneness with God') may be reached by practicing philanthropy to the point of personal poverty, sexual abstinence (as far as possible for hearers, completely for initiates) and diligently searching for wisdom by helping others.[3] However, practices varied among those who were Gnostic.

In Gnosticism, the world of the demiurge is represented by the lower world, which is associated with matter, flesh, time and, more particularly, an imperfect, ephemeral world. The world of God is represented by the upper world and is associated with the soul and perfection. The world of God is eternal and not part of the physical. It is impalpable and timeless.

They called themselves the "gola," ("exiles"), or the "bene gola" ("the children of the exiles"), and within the crucible of despair and hopelessness, they forged a new national identity and a new religion. The exile was unexplainable; Hebrew history was built on the promise of Yahweh to protect the Hebrews and use them for his purposes in human history. Their defeat and the loss of the land promised to them by Yahweh seemed to imply that their faith in this promise was misplaced. This crisis, a form of cognitive dissonance (when your view of reality and reality itself do not match one another), can precipitate the most profound despair or the most profound reworking of a world view. For the Jews in Babylon, it did both.

From texts such as Lamentations , which was probably written in Jerusalem, and Job, written after the exile, as well as many of the Psalms, Hebrew literature takes on a despairing quality. The subject of Job is human suffering itself. Undeserving of suffering, Job, an upright man, is made to suffer the worst series of calamities possible because of an arbitrary test. When he finally despairs that there is no cosmic justice, the only answer he receives is that humans shouldn't question God's will. Many of the psalms written in this period betray an equal hopelessness.

But the Jews in Babylon also creatively remade themselves and their world view. In particular, they blamed the disaster of the Exile on their own impurity. They had betrayed Yahweh and allowed the Mosaic laws and cultic practices to become corrupt; the Babylonian Exile was proof of Yahweh's displeasure. During this period, Jewish leaders no longer spoke about a theology of judgment, but a theology of salvation. In texts such as Ezekiel and Isaiah, there is talk that the Israelites would be gathered together once more, their society and religion purified, and the unified Davidic kingdom be re-established.

I'm sold.

That's kind of how I feel. Might be some kind of Stockholm syndrome, you begin to sympathize with something that wasn't really benefiting you. Even sympathy for the devil perhaps. There are those who say that the spiritual world and the physical world are one and the same and those who say they are separate. I don't know which is true.

First three years of my life were sweet but then my primary carer had a stroke or similar. Whilst she was home alone with me and when my mother came home nan was in a coma and I was sitting on her lap.
No one can tell me how much time I spent on my comatose nan's lap before my mother came home but she had raised me lovingly enough to give me the strength to pull through till the day I was old enough to leave and do it on my own. My mother, as she is nearing the end, is trying to crawl out of the denial I have denied her all these years but I doubt she'll get there in time. It's not my problem.
Thing is them being the 'good' catholics they were they would have told me nan went to heaven with the angels. And low and behold, I DID have a guiding light as a child. Like a bright soft pastel white with a shadowy face that had wild hair that would pop into my mind and I would hear a voice that told me "don't worry, everything will be allright in the end". And it was the only thing I unconditionally trusted.

In an experiment published in a recent issue of Neurogastroenterology and Motility, Robert Stern, a professor of psychology at Penn State, found that biofeedback helped people consciously increase and enhance their gastrointestinal activity. They used the brains in their heads, in other words, to help the brains in their guts, proving that at least some of the time two brains really are better than one.

Found the golden oldie


And this is a really good read too



I don't revere or dismiss science but having had the experiences I did had me see the world differently from a very early age. Surely I have huge chunks of my almost 50 year on this planet in a states of dissociation but I've no real regrets. They're only labels to me that serve more of a purpose to the person doing the labelling than they do to me. This is part of another post of mine


Trust is everything. We have more neuroreceptors in our guts than in our brain http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/healt ... d=all&_r=0

It could be argued it is irrational to trust reason over emotion In my case it would make sense. I have tried to overcome the hard-wiring that has it's origins in the traumas of my childhood but turns out it's not meant to be.
So I guess I ultimately decided to put my trust into that what got me through in the beginning