The serotonin hypothesis of depression has been empirically debunked. If it was true, SSRIs would function immideatly. The most plausible model of antidepressives is that serotonin adds noise to the brain (psychedelics too in slightly different way), creating random connections, which enhances neuroplasticity: the ability of the brain networks to more easily reorganize to a different configuration - to a less depressive/anxious etc. one in a way I described earlier. This is why it works differently for different people and why its more effective in conjunction with psychotheraphy and overall changes of external conditions, which pushes the system to that different configuration. '''abcde. Psychedelics''' Psychedelics can be seen as an internal enhancers of what's already there. Can make you see absolute meaning in everything and contemplate deeply in a raw unfiltered fashion. You can loose your evolutionary useful learned boundaries too. Psychedelic afterglow can be amazing. '''abcdef. CHEMTSCH''' Neural annealing says that with psychedelics, the free energy parameter in the brain is massively increased, leading to massive entropic disintegration (dissolution) of existing structures and reselforganization into a more symmetrical configuration. Dissolution is mostly common with 5-MeO-DMT. Existing structures can be dissolved, strenghtened or transformed. Other psychedelics also dissolve, but much more strenchten or transform existing belief structures. Many new interconnections between them can happen. If the trip revolves around a dissonant structure such as some worry, that can get strongly stenghtened and interconnected with everything, resulting in trauma. '''abcd. DMT entities and Gods''' DMT entities and Gods are higher order selfsynchronizing superselfmetaprogramming agent metaprocesss, usually outside of self model's agency, editable indirectly, you can merge with them, such as with god of compassion on meditation, or the God of Everything on 5-MeO-DMT as global coherence of clusters of brain dynamics, dissolving internal boundaries. DMT entities can be seen as competing clusters of coherence. DMT entities and Gods are standard background noise of self stabilizing software agents that normally parasitize on organismic information processing networks but get amplified when you blow yourself out of your brain on psychedelics. Gods are metaphors for nonsymbolic aka intuitionbased aka Fristonian free energetic force or attractors in the neurophenomenological statespace. They are usually some extreme of the psyche,: freedom, unity, suffering. Or symbolisms for something: fertility, sea, underworld, art. DMT entities can be projections of sociodynamic landscapes. For example, Jesters/Clowns/Harlequins express "narcissistic vibrational modes" of consciousness. Their traps & childish playpen energy is a manifestation of conditional love. Bodhisattva energy, on the other hand, is a manifestation of unconditional love modes of consciousness. It's such a different kind of vibrational landscape! DMT can help you see what kind of social dynamics you are subconsciously modeling as your "default mode of interaction". <ref>[https://twitter.com/algekalipso/status/1602578160943599617 Andrés Gómez Emilsson tweet]</ref> DMT activates a notion of observing foundational agency, while dissociating the individual self. Fractalized agency = machine elves, Gaia-ized agency = Pascha Mama, unified agency = cosmic consciousness, contracted unified agency = cosmic core <ref>[https://twitter.com/Plinz/status/1364675761781628928 Joscha Bach tweet]</ref> With classic psychedelics, which stand somewhere between DMT and 5-MeO-DMT in their level of global coherence, you always go through an annealing process before finally “snapping” into global coherence and “becoming one with God”. That coherence is the signature of these mystical experiences becomes rather self-evident once you pay attention to annealing signatures (i.e. noticing how incompatible metronomes slowly start synchronizing and forming larger and larger structures until one megastructure swallows it all and dissolves the self-other boundary in the process of doing so).<ref>[[On Rhythms of the Brain: Jhanas, Local Field Potentials, and Electromagnetic Theories of Consciousness | Qualia Computing]([On Rhythms of the Brain: Jhanas, Local Field Potentials, and Electromagnetic Theories of Consciousness | Qualia Computing]([On Rhythms of the Brain: Jhanas, Local Field Potentials, and Electromagnetic Theories of Consciousness | Qualia Computing]([On Rhythms of the Brain: Jhanas, Local Field Potentials, and Electromagnetic Theories of Consciousness | Qualia Computing](https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/10/27/on-rhythms-of-the-brain-jhanas-local-field-potentials-and-electromagnetic-theories-of-consciousness/)))) On Rhythms of the Brain: Jhanas, Local Field Potentials, and Electromagnetic Theories of Consciousness]</ref> God, or ontology and morals in general, as this ultimate abstraction on the highest level that controls everything else in the lower levels in some ways, and top down processing! Higher abstractions are bending the spacetime of lower abstractions in a cortical hiearchy! You merge with god/nature/reality on meditation or psychedelics when those kinds of hiearchies dissolve into hiearchyless attractor where everything influences and synchronizes with everything! Nondual unified oneness! <ref>[[A Sensory-Motor Theory of the Neocortex based on Active Predictive Coding | bioRxiv]([A Sensory-Motor Theory of the Neocortex based on Active Predictive Coding | bioRxiv]([A Sensory-Motor Theory of the Neocortex based on Active Predictive Coding | bioRxiv]([A Sensory-Motor Theory of the Neocortex based on Active Predictive Coding | bioRxiv](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.30.522267v1)))) A Sensory-Motor Theory of the Neocortex based on Active Predictive Coding]</ref> '''abcd. Meaning''' What is the most meaningful thing that has ever happened to you? Or what is the most meaningful situation to you? Something profound, transformative, intensely lived through, full of life and your values being satisfied? Full of selfactualization, selfrealization? Meaning can be seen as the sense of connection with us, others and everything. Meaning is also the set of values that we have. Values are fundamental priors and process niches that the nervous system experiences biggest amount of flow in. (influenced by both nature (genes) and nurture (environmental influences)) '''abcd. Neurodivergences''' '''abcdef. BN''' Too much or too little communication between and inside centers. '''abcdef. FEP''' Failure modes in bayesian model updating uncertainity reductions. '''abcdef. CHEMTSCH''' Nearly all psychiatric conditions may be characterized by some level of “oscillopathy” or “rhythmopathy.”<ref>[https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273%2823%2900214-3 Brain rhythms have come of age]</ref> Fragmentation of our world view (mental models) is the underlying problem leading to our problems in society (mind), ability to identify with one ingroup and go into rivaly with another outgroup, optimizing particular metric while externaliting harm to another metrics, the ability to benefit the near term while damaging the long term, all of those are special cases of percieving parts rather than wholes, which ended up actually damaging the wholes and parts themselves through the interdependence of parts. '''abcde. Definition of mental disorder''' It's a disorder if it disallows the individual to feel happiness and achieve his values and goals in which he sees meaning. The least damaged brain in my lens is one that enables the most wellbeing while still being functional in everyday tasks. So short term "derails" from the usual metastable configuration are part of the process. I see all those mental divergences from norm as spectrummy clusters of patterns in behavior caused genetically and environmentally that can create both adaptive or maladaptive patterns in behavior or neurobiology producing more than avarage suffering or happiness depending on the patterns. It can have evolutionary functions (such as being tribe leader, engineer, healer,...) to which one can adapt if the environment supports it with conditions, but it also can make one desynchronize with the environment or in general with himself internally, creating suffering for the individual, and neurotheraphypharmatechnological methods or any behavior correlating with happiness empirically can change the neurobiology to make the individual fit in his environment more or help his neurobiology have dynamics that supports having hedonium in the first place, making him suffer less. On the other hand in some cases some proposed methods can contract him into social constructs and happiness conditionings which can kill his ability to see freeying emptiness and feel unconditional love. Different systems also maximize different things with different intensities with different philosophical and political systems, which can be framed by minimizing dissonance under current memeplexes with least action. Happiness , knowledge, agency, productivity, technology, predictivity, spirituality or equality of beings for example, after basic needs of people are met (not always haha), which determines what should be normal by social constructs,... Different cultures have different set of normal behaviors and therefore different definitions of mental divergences that dont make the individual fit into the environment which then tries to fix him to fit into the environment. Avarage modernist american/european city or academia where psychosis is seeing empirically unmeasurable stuff (which sometimes breaks down haha) versus buddhist monk centers where its weird to not be dissolved versus spiritual groups where experiencing minds to the fullest isnt weird versus hyperfundamentalist muslim or christian countries where not believing in god is sign of devil that needs to be fixed with with neurotheraphypharmatechnological intervention. I'm an individual that loves to play with his internal models in the sea of atheistic Czechia, which isnt very compatible with most people here lol, but i can find compatible people where anyway. But I'm glad we don't tryhard capitalism as hard as America. A lot of the pharmacological solutions also solve symptoms instead of the cause. In this book I'm advocating for going at the cause. The very process that makes us effectively adapt to the environment by selecting relevant information in sensory data and constructing relevant for survival and collective goals useful hypotheses/models about them makes us vulnerable to selfdestructive dukkha suffering spirals. ADHD, causing the individual to jump from one thing to other on his mind, having trouble finishing stuff, forgetting stuff, impulsivity, which can create suffering by sense of failure, brokeness etc. generating negative experiental traumatic memories and associations, or autism making the individual create meaning of life around super specific topic, which makes him not being able to talk to people with normal social constructs. But combined gives the ability to do asperger like hyperfocus on topics that are extremely meaningful for the individual, which can on the other hand create meaningful life, status, sense of freedom,... It has to be compatible with the environment tho, to sustain the individual with the collective. To reduce individual's sense of uncertainity of his basic needs and meaning of life being fullfilled,... it can be adaptive or maladaptive. Stress is mostly not good neurobiologically for hedonium belief networks with consonant activity and functioning biohardware that isnt collapsing even tho it can enhance concrete productivity. You also dont want configurations that permanently break down some needed brain's functions such as for example consistent inner world simulation or ability to model somewhat coherent stories to make you survive with the environment, vibe with others, or not getting sucked into bad wellbeing attractor. Context matters! '''abcde. Depression''' '''abcdef. BN''' '''abcdef. FEP''' Depression is in Active Inference considered to be caused by repeating failed attempts at reducing uncertainity: basic needs and selfrealization. '''abcdef. CHEMTSCH''' '''abcdef. All''' '''abcde. Anxiety''' '''abcdef. CHEMTSCH''' Anxiety (resulting in procrastination) can be seen as the feeling of an emotion trying to rise up and push itself into our awareness and the feeling of our awareness trying to suppress the feeling, thus creating an uncomfortable agitation. When people who suffer from chronic anxiety are asked, “What is the emotion that is under your anxiety?”, they will often be surprised to discover that once they allow themselves to really feel whatever feeling that is, the anxiety weakens or diminishes. Sometimes it isn’t even something that may be perceived as negative— they are people reporting that they discovered emotions like excitement under their anxiety. '''abcde. ADHD''' [[Photoplayer Unusual Instrument Used In Silent Films - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OihbIgXBsMU) Neural orchestra of ADHD] '''abcde. Autism''' Overfitting. Underdeveloped theory of mind parts of brain. '''abcde. Schizophrenia''' Underfitting. Too much certainity on high level priors manifesting in hallucinations. '''abcde. Trauma and PTSD''' Trauma is learned dissonant responces to certain subset of sensory data stored in the bodymind. '''abcd. Lucid dreaming''' Lucid dreaming is somewhere in the middle between psychedelics and meditation. More control than psychedelics, more extreme than meditation. The generative model isn't constructed from the sensory data but from noise that can be transformed into anything and you get free wheeling halucinations, becoming the God of your inner world simulation. '''ab. Practical applications of this research '''abc. Fullstack Protocol for Engineering Wellbeing: Meditation, psychedelics, thinking''' '''abcd. Basic needs and health''' '''abcd. Reward architecture''' Don't hyperstimulate yourself with easy rewarding (dopaminogenic) activities or you'll build reward circuitry tolerance and won't be able to feel rewarded. To make dopaminogenic activities generate pleasantness in the long term, it has to be in a meaningful context. '''abcd. Meditation session''' '''abcde. Mental moves''' '''abcdef. Intention''' I really recommend with anything one does as not seeing it as an escape mechanism but rather than enhancement of everyday life. Integrate emptiness into form aka integrate nondual bliss into everyday life. '''abcdef. Relaxing''' '''abcdef. Gladening the mind''' To free mind from hindrances (sensual desire not aligned with current context, anger, hostility, hatred, sloth, restlessness, worry, doubt) that can be seen as forces in motor planning space field interfering with flow of energy in the phenomenal field, warping its spacetime like gravity n theory of relativity. Notice the hindrance, objectify it, throw it away or replace it by making it just a nebulous fabrication, optionally deconstruct it or show it proof that it serves no purpose anymore or show it love or show it that it doesn't exist without space and time with no possible linear structure and self other distinction. Come to present moment. Add wholesome thoughts. Warping of this spacetime by desires can be seen as suffering. Not warping this space is a learnable skill through meditation. Actions can be motivated and reinforced by fear, pain, pleasure. They are usually fight flight freeze responces. Managers (planning) managing the system to get away from exiles (painful memories) and exiles being shut down by firefighters (substance addictions). The space of needs to change the current state to better one is full of evolutionary useful darwinian delusions that makes us construct goals and make us statebuilding species. "Owning this car will finally make me satisfied!" can generate temporary happiness but usually you climb down back to the hedonic set point, as what material things seems to matter in the long term is just the cost of basic living, and those other material things don't make profound changes to the topology and generative model's structure of one's nervous system, which is where the sense of wellbeing seems to originate. Next step for selfmetaprogramming happiness is cultivating this symmetrical mind in for example this way that I'm describing in this book. '''abcdef. Building packets of negentropy''' Concetrate on an object. Anything you like concetrating on, breath, mandala, good things from the day. Smooth flow aka contentless states of high concetraction, sensory clarity, equaminity, love can be seen as packets of consonant negentropy, when sent as messages are melting dissonant knotted traumatic structures/bayesian markov blanket beliefs. '''abcdef. Seven factors of awakening''' "In brief, you first need to use “flow” which “melts” the structures (knots) of your world-simulation and makes them flexible and amenable to modifications. Then you use the seven factors in order to direct the evolution of the flow into healing and harmonious dynamics. Doing this over and over will, over time, allow you to create a very wholesome and healing flow. More specifically, here are the seven factors as seen through the lens of Neural Annealing: a. Balancing Factor: 1. Mindfulness a) Maintain flow in the foreground b) Focus on the texture rather than the content of flow c) Monitor for the arising of hindrances and inclining the mind away from them d) Noticing all the clusters of flow b. Energizing Factors: 1. Energy a) This is what happens when you “pluck” the flow. Naturally, this energizes the eigenmodes of the flow! It is like the light that gets trapped between two parallel mirrors. Energy illuminates the harmonics of the flow you are cultivating. 2. Joy a) The judicious selection of sets of eigenmodes that are consonant together b) Given joyous flow, deepening the joy entails energization, blending, and annealing of the consonant gestalt (cf. Focus on Positive) 3. Investigation a) Examining the texture of flow. Testing it to determine the presence of hindrances. b) It is listening for the ring of the flow (with its objects) and diagnosing what is in it c. Tranquilizing Factors: 1. Tranquility a) Cultivating tranquility entails developing highly-efficient cooling structures that channel flow and dissipate energy quickly (cf. Focus on Rest) (Delta Rivers) 2. Equanimity a) Not interfering with energy transit and dissipation by letting it recruit as large of a piece of flow as possible for its diffusion A b) At a high-enough concentration, equanimity undergoes a phase change. It becomes very fluid which balances out the forces inside you. I can see how in large enough amounts this would significantly reduce the suffering associated with intense pain.