I've heard Spatial give similar explanations, but his version sounds more about breaking down and rebuilding as something stronger each time. For myself, I don't think that my breakdowns really teach me much beyond fear, anymore. The zeal I've seen others believe to find from self discovery tends to either look to me like a distraction from continuing on the path, the idea that they've found the answer, or it's a temporary high that wears off when they realize that they didn't really see much of anything or fall back into blind patterns despite it.
I think learning about yourself is more likely to be achieved through not just studying yourself, but forming an average between that and a series of harsh truth trustworthy friends (trustworthy being the most subject to bias here, as someone might just decide to pick friends that will tell them what they want to hear). By yourself your point of reference is constantly changing, even your memories can change in nature depending on what times you choose to remember them, while others alone will only grant so much, providing a superficial understanding if done solely. The two together however help to form a more objective map that's more likely to see past the blind spots everyone has, often through seeing their own experiences and then dissecting the parts that are relate-able if not through having people around you that can snap you out of a shrouding script.
The above is how I've always handled it, but that may be me projecting the solution that worked for me as "the solution" from that having been a crutch for my own issues. I'm not sure why, but I seem to have trouble studying myself alone these days. For whatever reason I can't really seem to attach much of a sense of identity to myself anymore beyond a list of symptoms and past histories, finding other areas to either feel blank or rawly confusing (mostly blank). What was once a functioning mind now feels more like a series of file cabinets. Everything feels like it's devolved into a sense of interests and sensations, no real goals or aspirations beyond a sense of comfort, and when alone for too long I lack a strong distraction from myself that gradually breaks me down into something crazy again.
I don't know where it happened, but the presence of other people has somehow become my medication. After looking towards myself as something worth studying and finding out more than enough details... I can't stand to be within my own company anymore, and from that overtime things stop feeling blank and get a little too "real" (in an unrealistic, delusional, and occasionally hallucinatory sense). I think I might be dissociating from something I ought to be worrying more about. I thought I was improving, but all I was really doing was gaining a semblance of public functionality and some tactics that let me take a vacation from myself at a cost that I formerly saw as growth.
If this is genuine and sincere information, I can relate to you on most of those points. What once was deemed "childlike wonder" has turned into chronic dissociative analysis. Almost a constant third-person view that tends to oscillate somewhat unbidden, sometimes very inappropriately. It's like finding yourself suddenly in zero-g, without anything within reach to grab and no amount of flailing gets you any closer.
I've learned to veer from certain thoughts, but it's changed nature and become a little more intrusive, compulsive and exhausting arguing with myself. While it seems the "noise in the head" would do well to have peace and quiet and solitude, that's when it raises its volume. Having people around and others to bump against, certainly has a stabilizing effect without which all concept of ground beneath the feet vanishes. Being an admitted schizoid, I recognize my impulse for solitude isn't necessarily a good idea. But there's the dissonance that needs fine-tuning, which doesn't always happen best when it's left to you to do it for yourself.
Anyway, the satori I have had was complete and total connectedness and a thorough assurance that all that is happening or will happen or can happen will be fine, no matter what. I forgot the day after that initial dip into that soothing, warm ocean of being... People tell me I was uncharacteristically cheerful, affable, and so on. I remember times I tried thinking of what I used to imagine as bad, just to see if this feeling could retain its integrity, which it did...then the waves washed my sense of self away and I was just "in it."
The aftermath of these things really brings you back to a very hard crash. When I come to those feedback loops and racing thoughts and rapid causal thinking (that seems to jump to conclusions), there's this inner laughter approaching the paradoxes reason alone can't navigate you around.
Buttered Toast stated: source post
What once was deemed "childlike wonder" has turned into chronic dissociative analysis. Almost a constant third-person view
I don't know if I ever had much along the lines of childlike wonder. Third person's what I remember being pretty far back (around age four). The only times I've really felt like I was within myself is, typically, when I'm in an episode.
I've learned to veer from certain thoughts, but it's changed nature and become a little more intrusive, compulsive and exhausting arguing with myself.
That "changed nature" has always been me. Until I was a sophomore in college, the inner dialogue of my mind felt like eight voices at once yelling with me trying to decipher my own thoughts from the remains. None of them could ever agree on anything to the point where I didn't even know which ones were me and which ones were devils advocate until a post-debrief. Some dreams required a similar debrief to separate which was real and which was strangely convincing fiction.
My "nothing is truth" conclusion likely stems from this. Even with my mind being more centered however I still seem unsure about any sense of self beyond data. With others at least their sense of self can interact with my data, while by myself there's some sort of divide present beyond past revelations that... now feel like just more data.
While it seems the "noise in the head" would do well to have peace and quiet and solitude, that's when it raises its volume.
More noise always seems like the way to try to tune out an episode. If not for that, it gets too loud on it's own. I used to turn on every television and raise the volume while streaming music loudly on my computers to try to make it all shut up.
Having people around and others to bump against, certainly has a stabilizing effect without which all concept of ground beneath the feet vanishes.
They become the new focus, a grounding resource of study. As long as I am obsessing over their lives I can tune out the chaotic aspects of my own. Through others I find a sense of order and structure, while alone the mind will invent things to worry about.
I was briefly agoraphobic and almost germophobic once I left college and my OCDs began to return in full swing. Once I was around people for long enough, once I recognized that those behaviors were maladaptive for socializing and felt challenged to not respond to it, that started to disappear, but when alone there's no one to passively correct the problems as I lose a sense of perspective, a skewed and nonsensical mental landscape in lieu of a reference point of where I once was. When it's not that, the Nihilism and retard-angst goes full throttle and I feel like I just want everything to stop.
Being an admitted schizoid, I recognize my impulse for solitude isn't necessarily a good idea.
An old friend of mine (with the same disorder) was fairly similar. Having someone that challenged him to socialize without pushing him too hard when he needed his reading/game time made for a good balance.
Anyway, the satori I have had was complete and total connectedness and a thorough assurance that all that is happening or will happen or can happen will be fine, no matter what. I forgot the day after that initial dip into that soothing, warm ocean of being... People tell me I was uncharacteristically cheerful, affable, and so on. I remember times I tried thinking of what I used to imagine as bad, just to see if this feeling could retain its integrity, which it did...then the waves washed my sense of self away and I was just "in it."
That to me honestly sounds frightening. It sounds like it borders on cultish descent if not some frightening form of delusional madness.
Then again, what few times I've been close to happy I've shut down out of reflexive fear. I don't feel comfortable with most forms of it beyond stimulation.
The aftermath of these things really brings you back to a very hard crash.
A crash? Is your euphoria a sort of mania?
When I come to those feedback loops and racing thoughts and rapid causal thinking (that seems to jump to conclusions)
I'm not sure that I understand what you specifically are meaning with this one.