@enkiv2 recognition that the 'voice' of the self is not "me", or rather is not fully in control: is what allows me to ignore symptoms of rumination and persistent thoughts of suicide when I'm depressed. A sense of De-realization thru meditation has been amazingly helpful.

I don't think it's a mistake that the gut-brain axis deals with serotonin and is affected by stress. Nor is it suprising that we're finding effects on white matter from that system.

@enkiv2 egodeath freaks people out too, it's a common feature of meditation that can be achieved by accident. If you don't know about this form of De-realization, it can be traumatizing.

Oh yeah. white matter is interesting here too. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4712309/

@ultimape TBH, I get depersonalization/dissociation all the time, but it doesn't bother me because I feel like it's more *realistic* -- in other words, I have seen past the illusion that I exist, and that *should* be a natural state, because I'm not in a position where having an ego benefits me.

@enkiv2 I think there are at least 5 different research silos who are all looking at the same phenomena, the idea that we can train the way we experience this kind of thing has been my focus of late. I wanna try to hear 'otherselves' in a controlled way, my thinking being it's what I'm missing with regards to my autistic sense of other people.

There's some evidence that it might be possible to change it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3406539/

@ultimape
More if you consider magick, which is all about that according to Crowley & others.

@enkiv2 what is that exactly? I have only looked at it passively, struck me as a information theory remix of Jung's collective unconscious.

5* medical science research silos

@ultimape
Information theory remix of Jung is not far off. Weaponized cognitive psychology by way of memetics is how I usually phrase it.

Or, "magick is to psychology as programming is to mathematics".

Or, "magick is marketing for goths".

@ultimape I also get those distortions when tired. (But, I get it from pot, or from caffeine, or from just concentrating too hard on an object. Those are, I think, entry-level distortions -- normal perceptual distortions that are only noticable if you look for them.)

@enkiv2 I get really extreme ones, like alice & wonderland losses of scale. acute paredolia to the point where I thought I was seeing ghosts back when I was younger. I can't wrap my head around forshortening techniques because my brain doesn't model shapes correctly in space so things will seem to jump and move while standing still. stuff like doors or laptop screens seem to stretch and skew instead of maintaining their squareness. When I do handle faces, they 'melt'.

@ultimape Yeah, I don't have anything quite *that* extreme. If I look at graph paper, the squares pop. If I look too closely at something, it jumps around & pieces disappear because of saccades.

@enkiv2 part of why my avitar has green hair is because I went almost 18 years not recognizing my self in a mirror. I dyed my hair green in college around the time I was learning to meditate and it was like a lightbulb went on in my head. Recognized myself since.

So it was striking to read that bit in the article about what it would be like to have that experience stick all the time.. this was littterally my lived experience growing up, and I had the reverse effect.

@enkiv2 I know what they are now, but back as a child it was like reality was loosing it's fidelity. My recient connection i made was they'er tied to the voice in my head I call 'self'. They get more extreme as the self looses it's volume.