When you write down all your thoughts, you'll see that they all show a different side of you. If you combine them, you'll learn about yourself.

This is a way healthier way to look at it than Buddhism, which creates too much distance between you and your thoughts. Also, this whole "we are all one person and one consciousness" thing, frankly, is disgusting. Show some respect to individual beings. This starts with owning your own thoughts, instead of not identifying with them.

I love looking at my own brain and seeing how it all works. This thought comes from here, then from there. You can talk back to your thoughts, and you get a lively conversation that helps change the tone of your thoughts.

People, especially in Buddhism, completely lost their minds when it comes to thinking. You don't really understand how it works, so you create these weird analogies that create an unhealthy relationship with thinking. If I don't like a thought, I say, "Go f yourself," to that thought. That's how you learn to stand up for yourself within yourself, and in life. It also teaches you, implicitly, a lot about how you do things yourself.

Thoughts, in that sense, reflect back what you do, just as Buddha got reflected that he had a huge ego but missed every important detail. Sitting and doing breathing exercises under a tree is the equivalent of not knowing anything.

You're Always Somewhere

Suppose we defined depression as feeling sad for eight hours a day (yes, I know, this is a theoretical example). And suppose that was the reason we'd go to the doctor.

Then you should also go to the doctor if you feel blissfully happy for eight hours a day. Do you see? It's exactly the same. But we don't do that. Because blissful feelings are nice. Depression? We don't like that. But the principle is exactly the same. Both states belong there just as much—or just as little.

Wonders of the Brain

All this psychiatric stuff is in the way of seeing how our brains work: they are wonders in themselves. It's easy to get distracted by what they can't do; you can also focus on what they can do. A lot of creativity comes from "ADHD" brains. A lot of detail comes from "autistic" brains. Embrace that. It's precious. Frankly, those brains are more precious than a lot of the things that are being produced right now.

It's so easy to box a group of people and diagnose them with ADHD, and then look for similarities. It's a thinking trap. You are always going to find those things. But you're looking from the wrong angle.

A lot of distraction is new connections being formed. A lot of overstimulation is processing things in unbelievable detail. Embrace that. It's precious. More fundamental and precious than things that are not natural.

Taking Fear Out of the Equation

We have a lot of autism running in the family. Some practical guidelines on what's hard from the autism perspective.

1)

Autism can feel paralyzing, because every step you want to take, you immediately see all paths. It's like when you want to do something, you know so many things about it that it physically paralyzes you. You get, in a sense, overwhelmed by information and knowledge. So it's absolutely vital to do things how a lot of people do them, and just do something without having any idea what you are doing.

This is the reason I started kickboxing. Kickboxing is an art form in physical movement, but it also requires you to stop thinking about things. You have to act. This feels liberating.

The reason I write this down is twofold. I think most fear around psychiatric things is because we lack knowledge of how things work, not because the things themselves are problems.

2)

For people who identify with autism (I can't stand the official labels, to be honest), it's vital to balance your energy throughout the day. So you go up and down. You go to maximum voltage, and then you soften your whole body and go to a low voltage.

But 1 is the most important thought. If you just understand how it works for you, then it's not crazy anymore. I have this weird thing where I love to feel understimulated, for instance. It doesn't kill you.

Everybody has all psychiatric diseases.

The difference between people is the duration and the intensity, not whether we have it or not.

I can hear the psychologists sigh. “You don’t get it. We only diagnose somebody when it occurs for a certain duration. A depression, for instance, has to last two weeks before we call it a depression.”

No, you are missing all the important details. You are missing that you yourself go through seconds of OCD during the day. Those details are absolutely vital. It's that nuance that is the whole point if you want to deal with these things.

I actually tried it out in real life. I literally tried to get as many psychiatric conditions as possible, which I both fortunately and unfortunately succeeded in.

Have you never wondered why people with depression, for instance, don't have the same amount of depression the whole day long? One hour is better than the other hour.

The devil is always in the details.

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How to Get a Psychosis

First, you need to make an underlying mistake. A mistake that lots of people make because of the way they grew up, for instance. Something that happened in their youth. Things that nobody explained to them.

I learned to shush myself every time I wanted to speak out.

It's possible that ADHD is more like a canary in the coal mine kind of thing. That in people with ADHD, it's the first place where it becomes visible that we do things a certain way. We sit a lot. We listen a lot. Our eating habits are meh. Also, we live in an extremely performance-driven society. So every kid that is distracted can go to the doctor and get a prescription. For what? To learn better? Learning is important, but the way we learn right now is imaginary. Sitting in school, there is nothing normal about that.

I worry a lot about my performance. I am easily distracted. Yet, when I look at my output and my colleagues' output, it doesn't differ that much.

Why Science Makes the Same Mistake as Calorie Counters Do

I used to count calories. From the perspective of a calorie counter, there is no argument against it. It works. You lose weight. You can calculate your food intake and weight loss until the decimal point. There is literally no logical case to make against calorie counting. So, with the calorie-counting game, any logical argument is in the same dimension as calorie counting.

Most science is exactly like that. I am obviously overgeneralizing, but within the same dimension, using the same logic, there is no argument to make against science. It feels like this will forever be the way to look at reality.

The problem is this: by basing your relationship with reality solely on scientific principles, you don't see all the other relationships you can have with reality and the beautiful shapes and forms it can take. Science is, in a sense, a very rigid view, almost like a fundamentalist religious view of life. The argument is that science rejects and refines itself. But in my opinion, it really doesn't. It's just very incremental steps. If you just take the things we know about our universe, we know absolutely nothing. Physics, for instance, I wouldn't count the last few hundred years as progress.

Back to calorie counting. I calculate my maintenance at 3,000 calories a day. It works. I get into exactly the shape I want. It feels like I have conquered reality.

Then why is it a bad idea?

Therefore, we need to move from theory to real life.

In real life, there are no days that you need exactly 3,000 calories. There are days that you need 2,000, days that you need 4,000, and days that you need 2,121. So, in that sense, the calorie counter is off 100% of the correct measurements. This is the same kind of "off" as in fundamental physics. Whenever you move from theory to real life, you are kind of right, but 100% wrong. Because you are projecting your view onto reality, and then reality becomes that a little, but 99% of the time it's not. You might hit a "correct" measurement 1% of the time, but that is more luck than anything else.

Also, you push away all the other relationships with reality, just like the calorie counter pushes away natural feelings of hunger, appetite, and the feeling of, "What do I want to do?" It's like losing the translation from theory to real life. You force your view of life onto life, and therefore you think it is that.

And again, let me re-emphasize the hard part. When somebody is in one dogma, like science or solely religion, there is virtually no reason against it, because all reasoning happens in the same dimension, and you can't win that argument. You argue against scientific reasoning. You can't argue against a fundamentalist religious person. You can only give a glimpse of your perspective on life.

I have nothing against science. I did not grow up in a scientific family, nor in a religious one. But it's so fascinating to hear people in science talk about religious people as if those people are completely stupid, which they are not. You are the one missing a big chunk of reality.

I want to add one more thing. Counting calories, in that sense, is not a mistake. Nor is science. It's a levels game. You go through your calorie-counting phase, and then you grow into the next one.

It's easier to see the start of this universe as an expression of something deeper—an expression of an art form.

Just like thoughts, and the tone of those thoughts, are expressions of emotions too.

At the highest levels of life, it becomes an art form in itself.

The art of living, so to speak. You mirror your thoughts onto reality. They become paintings.

It becomes a sport to move up and down through social classes.

The Buddha Example

Let's take Buddha, for example.

The guy did not get it, for a simple reason. When you sit down under a tree and try to end all suffering in the world, that in itself is a projection of the ego. It's that finesse you have to understand. Then walking away claiming we all have an ego is a mistake. It's a levels game.

I know people in the lower echelons of life who are so unbelievably good at life that it would give you shivers. But you don't want to be a d*ck about it, since there are people (and animals) who are in terrible shape. Also, you get humbled along the way.

All the Pros Know

Buddha was not good at consciousness. Big religious figures were, but they got lost along the way. The real pros are always backstage.

How to Move Up and Down in Social Classes

I grew up in the lower classes. First, I went up through education. After that, I crashed to the "lowest" levels, in psychiatry. I was seen as the lowest of the low. Now, I am in the highest levels.

I know how arrogant this sounds. But it's true. My thoughts dance within me. They are beautiful. I feel good.