Agreed!

That’s awesome. It’s super entertaining!

Fairy Tale by Stephen King. Super fun read, I love him as an author and it’s refreshing to see his style in the fantasy genre.

TL;DR at the bottom.

I’ve had several. I think the most recent and one of the most profound was during and after the deepest meditation I’ve ever done.

I used to meditate quite a bit during covid and after, but fell out of practice a couple years ago. Fast forward, I have a new job, moved across the country, bought a house, and I am about to get married (this was a couple months ago). I didn’t realize that I had been depressed for a few months. So I decided to take some shrooms up in the mountains in the snow.

That gave me the headspace to really think about my life and what marriage means and to connect with nature away from distractions. I was finally able to find a level of peace and clarity.

That was on a Saturday. On the following Monday is when I had the meditation.

I did a quick home workout and it just kind of struck me that I should meditate and set some time aside to just be and feel and process after the experience I had over the weekend.

So I laid down on my back in the dark and put on some ambient relaxing music. I’ll try and summarize how I got to this spiritual place as best I can (highly recommend reading the untethered soul, it was the inspiration for this).

Basically, I think that the voice in our head, even the one that logically thinks about how we are feeling and logically reasons and thinks through things isn’t really who we are. That voice is just a product of all of our experiences. Who we are, at our core, is truly the being and presence that created that voice. So I told the voice that kept popping up to shhh.

That’s it, just shhhh. And eventually it stopped.

What happened next was a feeling of connection and being and grounding. There were any thoughts there was just this core being a part of this amazing, huge universe, and I felt a part of it. I felt what I can only describe as pure love. I will say I do believe in a higher power and that is the form the sense of universe took for me, but it was equally feeling connected and a part of everything in this world.

I sat with that and just felt until the timer I set went off.

I slowly opened my eyes, took a few breaths, and just came back to awareness. This was what was wild, I could feel every fiber of the carpet I was laying on, the individual strands of my hair, the fabric of my shirt, the way the light shone through the crack in the door. I took a shower and water the light reflect on the water and felt every rain drop on my head. It was the most intense feeling of connection I’ve ever had and that includes during any trip.

For me, it solidified that at the end of the day we are beings of love. Deep down beneath it all. And it’s a choice to lean into that and to not close off. To feel. The positives and the negatives. To love everyone and everything around us even when we don’t agree. To give and spread love.

TL;DR Depression sucks, our voice in our head is not who we are, we are a part of something larger, we are at a core, love.

For real? Who do you consider a “normie”?

Mainstream users are why any social media thrives and has content. Not sure hostility towards anyone is going to help when they check it out and see this is one of the top comments…

The Bobiverse and Old Man’s War series’ are both super fun examples that fit the bill perfectly! I really enjoyed them both.