Best Of

@FleaMarket said:
Take a comforting breath with you
Also if you have some B-vitamins they help a lot with hang overs.

Thank you very much @FleaMarket. Along with other vitamins, I take vitamin B daily, since I also read that it helps with anxiety.

Yesterday's barbecue was a great success since I felt very normal and ordinary and did not experience much anxiety. I came with the attitude to allow everything and was quite OK with being a mess - and that seems to help the mess not happening. On occasion I had some negative or anxious thoughts but just told myself to allow them and not make a big deal out of them. That too helped them pass quickly.

However, I notice that these days I am quite the introvert. When I was younger I was much more of an extrovert. I read a nice explanation for this dichotomy in that extroverts start the day with zero "coins" and with each social interaction they gain a "coin". Introverts start the day with five "coins" and with each interaction lose a "coin" until they lose all the coins and must regenerate on their own. After the barbecue I felt tired and depleted and needed to regenerate. I wish I was more of an extrovert as I used to be

Today and for the next two days I am participating virtually in a job-related conference. My only job for these three days is to participate in the events where I'm only listening, try to get the maximum from the experience, and not chicken out from the more social events in which I need to - OMG - actually talk to strangers. I am currently a bit overwhelmed by the technical side of it, the platform seems quite confusing and complex, but will tinker with it until I figure it out and feel comfortable. I notice that when I am feeling overwhelmed my brain seems to function less well. Wish me luck!

A spiritual teacher once told me that a nice way to see yourself as you are (and in this way combat the negative ideas you have about yourself) is to film yourself. I did that previously and always thought that I come across much better than I perceive myself. I just watched the video presentation we recorded for the conference and had the same reaction. For instance, the anxiety that I feel, does not appear to be visible in the video - yet I always think that everyone can spot it immediately.

Personally, I find that an attachment is largely a shackle that limits my freedom & equanimity. It typically morphs in service to my ego into whatever form that I'm most susceptible to at any moment. No amount of gilding or intellectualizing about it, effectively minimizes its inertia, save the willingness to face it through the entire spectrum of my sense gates in the meditation of that moment.

When to drop attachments?

Whenever I'm ready to take another step along the path towards suffering's cessation or disturb the slumber of my identity comfort for a disquieting awakening towards spiritual adulthood.

For me, I think its kind of context dependent. Giving up an attachment can help you work through the addiction of it. And if you're in a retreat scenario there is merit in giving them all up to achieve deeper states of calm and insight. But also engaging with certain activities or people in a mindful way can teach us a lot about our psychology too.

I'm not sure I'm right about my position, certainly not for everyone, and I don't want to lead anyone down a wrong path. I'm kind of an empath and I soak up the energies of the world around me, so unless I'm able to isolate myself I'll work on letting go of the mental/emotional aspects of an attachment only to find myself wrapped up in the emotional energy of wherever I happen to be working that week. I'd work to cleanse and let go of that energy over the weekend and be in relatively decent place by the end of the weekend, but then have to go back out into it. It just got to be too frustrating.

So right now I do still do 20 minutes of meditation in the morning and evening, listen to a few hours of Dharma talks while working and try to live a balanced and wholesome life. I have a few more occasional connections with people around my hobbies and interests, which I do tend to get obsessed with, but I try to be mindful about it and know when to step away.

This was a good older discussion which touches on this subject:

https://newbuddhist.com/discussion/23801/video-game-violence-and-buddhism/p1

As you can see I have been struggling with this topic for a while. Its been good for me to read some of the things I wrote back then, I was pretty forthright. I wouldn’t go so far as to say games are bad for everyone, for some people it might be a better choice than others, or a necessary escape. But for those on a spiritual path who are serious about it its not a good habit.

@person said:
what got me back into the game was seeing the streaming games and the way they presented their characters, it looked really fun to me.

Yes that co-creative aspect of the game, the idea of just having fun with the theatre of it. In some ways a certain amount of optimisation is unavoidable, it is part of operating within the rules. You take the Quarterstaff +2 over a non-magic quarterstaff because it is better.

But I feel that you can take that creative role-play into the character creation process as well, which means not feeling forced into making optimal choices such as selecting Fireball as your first level 3 spell if you play a Wizard. It may not be necessary to pick a support-only character.

The way we used to play back when I was last playing D&D and not DM’ing, the Wizard was a bit of a glass cannon. Nobody else could do as much damage to a pack of enemies as the group’s Wizard, which was often me, at the cost of not being able to stand up to much punching.

We can become attached to almost anything just as our relationship with anything can become the means of discovering equanimity.

The degree to which we are attached to anything is the degree to which we will suffer the uncomfortable consequences of that attachment.
The degree to which we are not attached to anything is the degree to which we do not suffer the consequences of that attachment.

The ego's storyline, which is simply a collective construct of our attachments, is not softened by another storytelling of an attachment. The storyline of the ego is only dissipated by the establishment of a greater life effort in the transcendence of our attachments than in our continued indulging of them.

Even education itself becomes a limitation when a professional student's underlying motivations become an avoidance of facing life's responsibilities.
How much more so can an imaginary game be?