June 10, 2023

Maladaptive DAYDREAMING


 

“In the beginning there was nothing except darkness and a spirit - THE Spirit.

The Spirit was, and is, infinitely powerful - powerful beyond the comprehension of any human mind. The Spirit is so powerful that he was able, by the action of his will alone, to trigger an atomic explosion with chain reactions of unimaginable force. In fact, the Spirit imagined the worlds - he imagined how to create them - from the most enormous to the most minuscule. He imagined the atoms. When he imagined them he created, in his imagination, all that moved and will move: all that lived and will live; all that is motionless, or seems to be - every single thing.

But it existed only in his imagination. All was still in darkness. Once he had an overall view of what he wanted to create, he was able, by his exceptional spiritual force, to create, instantaneously, the four forces of the Universe.”                                                                                                       

Michel Desmarquet, Thiaoouba: The Golden Planet.

 

The imagination has always existed. The Superior Intelligence had it before the creation of the Universe.

In this video I'd like to talk about my experience with imagination...

There are people who can't imagine things. They can't imagine a carrot against a dark background, for example. For me, this is a trivial act, since I have always had a developed imagination. And at the age of 14 I made it too developed...

Then I was in the 9th grade and fell in love at first sight with a girl from the 11th grade. I couldn’t just approach her and talk to her for fear that I would stutter and wouldn’t be able to say a word, and everything would end badly. Subconsciously, I knew that in the worst case, I could kill myself, which led me to the decision to save myself from all the difficulties of life by retreating into purposeful fantasies that I built almost constantly.

I no longer experienced any emotional distress - I had an ideal (* "ideal" in quotation marks) life, where I could be anyone and with anyone.

In addition to fantasizing, I also unconsciously trained myself to speak to myself when the person in my imagination said something. Because of all this, the muscles of my face began to be in constant tension, and some people thought that I was constantly smiling. Once a classmate Yura in the 9th grade noted this to Ekaterina Vasilievna, our class teacher. She also saw this and said something about whether everything was fine with my head. This would be a good moment to realize my mistake and start focusing my attention on the data coming from my five senses - on reality, on the material world around me. But at that time it was impossible, because stuttering - the original cause of me starting purposefully daydreaming - was still a problem for me (* see my videos on stuttering for details).

It was terrible. I remember how my friends Anton and Stas and I went out for a walk on the football field, and then I realized that my mind was in such a haze that I was even ready to wonder if the place around me was the reality. I mean, logically I knew it was reality, but it also felt... so far away.

Then, many years later, when I was very lost in my daydreams, there was a moment at the Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad metro when I went downstairs, took off my glove, and ran my hand along the iron railing. A thought crept into my mind - are these sensations real or is it all imagination?

The last interesting moment, which I will talk about, happened when I was sleeping. First, let me explain that in the 10th grade, a new classmate Nastya asked me to be her boyfriend. My attention was drawn to her on the first day that I saw her, and therefore I agreed. But... stuttering... because of the fear of speech, I almost stopped going to school... and on one of the rare days that I visited this institution, it became clear that another classmate deprived her of her virginity.

There was a time when I had the following dream. I was on a tram coming from a stop near my former school. In the tram car, on a single seat, was the same girl who asked me to be her boyfriend in the tenth grade. I thought of approaching her, but suddenly a guy approached her, who in reality deprived her of her virginity. Suddenly I had no desire to talk to her anymore, I gave up and let that guy talk to her while I stood silently on the side. And then, as if from nowhere, my village acquaintance with black hair, Olga, sitting on another seat, said to me: “Zhenya, you have been going down all your life. Isn't it time to go up?” - I immediately woke up.

My mind was absolutely clear at that moment. I realized then that, in fact, I no longer have friends in the real world; I saw the real cost of that distant decision to start actively fantasizing that I made in the ninth grade. This state of purest mind lasted for a second, maybe two. Then I clearly remember how the haze, which had become such an everyday thing for me during the three years that I constantly dreamed about something, began to cloud my mind very quickly, and now I was again completely immersed in myself, in my inner world.

It was a scary period of my life. I understood what the constant use of my imagination had led me to, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not do anything about it - it seemed that the habit was very strong and refused to go away.

However, there were rare moments when I refocused on reality and put all the talk and fantasy out of my head. But often I’d immediately remember stuttering, and then a new big problem for me - about the lip, on which there was a noticeable scar from previous damage. I’d begin to worry and think about all this, and then the thoughts would smoothly turn into imagination once again. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get myself out of my inner world...

However, that dream clearly showed me that I had serious problems - I created those problems. But because I got into my daydreaming so much during those months and then years, I almost couldn't stop fantasizing and also talking in my head while thinking, for example. It has become a habit – a very strong habit. I forgot how to think properly…

(* Looking ahead, I will say this - a person is in the state of "I am" when he is fully aware of his real environment; his mind is completely clear; and thoughts simply arise without any words - perhaps with a bit of imagination if the situation requires it…)

But everything that has a beginning has its end. At the age of 18, after I learned the true cause of stuttering, I no longer needed imagination. Going to bed, I was able to concentrate on the present moment without any difficulty, and I fell asleep peacefully, without thinking about anything for the first time in 4 years. Of course, sometimes, before falling asleep, different thoughts visited me, but I simply transferred my attention back to the reality in which I was.

I did not know then what fate had in store for me... those subsequent events hardly relate to this topic, and I already wrote about them in my free book "Simple Truths of Life". If you’re interested, you can read it.

Later I would learn that in English my condition was called maladaptive daydreaming.

 

I record an addition here to briefly say that another negative consequence of such a journey into the imagination in my case was that I began to be tense in the whole body and in facial expressions, and this led to neurosis and then to problems with breathing and heart rhythm. Relaxing and focusing on reality eliminated all those negative effects.

 

As you can see, a person who has a physically normal brain always has control over what he himself focuses his mind on. Even after four years of non-stop fantasizing, I was able to focus on the reality around me without difficulty. Yes, due to habit, thoughts and fantasies began to creep into my head, but I was aware of what was happening and where it would lead me, and I again changed the focus of attention to reality.

It's worth saying that the feeling was that at that moment I was focusing on my frontal part of the brain. This is important to understand, because we can actually switch, or activate, different parts of our brain (* as far as I know there are no words yet to properly describe what I mean). I talked about this in a video about how to learn to see Auras. I advise you to watch it, because everything in life is interconnected. If the vision of the Aura is not very interesting for you, then the acquired skills in controlling your brain can help you in other areas of life.

So, we see that such a state of consciousness, which may seem very scary to someone with little understanding of the essence of the problem, is not a disease (* in case someone thinks so). It is a simple consequence of our own decisions and actions that we make of our own free will. And it changes with a simple concentration of attention on what is happening around a person here and now. Meditation and concentration can also help a lot in this matter.

Someone may ask - is this really all? Yes, that's all. This is another psychological problem that has a very simple cause and therefore a solution.

(* The other one is stuttering. Also, I recently realized that Asperger's syndrome is also likely to have simple causes and solutions)

Thanks for watching and don't go too deep into your daydreams! And if you do, now you have an idea how to dig yourself out from under the rubble.

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