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Tobias 1099~3Y
Sorry to hear the effects are lingering for you; I'm feeling terrible again today so maybe I've got days more of that to look forward to! Oh well, better than getting the virus, people say...

There's a book by Derren Brown called "Happy" that I read - or rather listened to - a few years ago which goes into the history of the perceptions of 'happiness', and how back in ancient times, it was considered a mental state of ignorant fools too stupid to think seriously about the world. It was a bunch of cumulative social movements and influential figures that led to it becoming seen as our primary mental goal - or even default mental state, such that anything different is deviation - as it is today.

So I can see how financial independence as a concept would have developed similarly, and how it'd be just as much of a cultural construction.

I've also found great value in things like mindfulness and associated secular-spiritual perspectives; so much of our understanding of the world and our own minds is completely cultural, narrow, and seeing different angles like that is extremely eye-opening, I've found.

Obviously - and sadly - realisations like these have never been permanent 'cures' for my many woes, but they all feel like bright steps towards something greater, which I wouldn't have been able to discover if I'd been well-adjusted along the established trajectory. So I'm weirdly grateful for the darkness, in a way, despite the suffocation.
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LevProtter39~3Y
Well said.
I found that 'revelations' of the sort can be maintained with meditation and eliminating distractions, but when I lapse on things that bring back the dark, it's easy to forget about all that.
I feel like decent sleep patterns are my only foothold on sanity.
I'm hopeful.
The whole 'no-self' idea really helped me with not directing any of the darkness back inwards (or outwards).

I think that perhaps 'happy' (whatever it might mean) could never be default in the fragmented modern society, but could during quiet more straightforward times.

Perhaps we can't tame the mind, but can trick it into taming itself.
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