Hi dude,
It depends on the choice of exercise and the level of anxiety. The reason these warnings are there is many years of experience have shown us literally that unprepared hacking and not 'knowing ourselves' can lead anxious people to delusion, panic attacks, various forms of mental illness and even death.
Imagination plus sentiment can kill; sure, we've all heard stories about some moron who took psychedelics for the first time and jumped off a building, but even quite sensible folks can lose the plot under pressure.

Trying to get off medications too soon due to guilt about dependence has caused deaths from epilepsy and asthma, and relapse for those on psychiatric meds. Mixing incompatible chemicals (for example, dropping lots of benzodiazepines when drunk, or eating MAOIs and cheese) is a classic way to die in our sleep.

Using the right tools but the wrong input has caused delusions that required medication to hack -for example some idiot trying self-hypnosis in a chronic anxious state convinced himself he was a famous historical character and committed suicide. Another guy tried to harm his kids, believing them to be 'too pure to live in this world'. A third I know of has been hospitalized since 1994, and still believes he is some kind of deity.

So we must respect the awesome power of mind, in just the same way sensible people don't play 'pass the parcel' with live grenades and we don't drive when pissed out of our brains. Knowing ourselves and making sure anxiety is under control before we start messing with memory & imagination, and doing things in the right order is the only safe way to go.

All these people got into trouble by doing things in the wrong order, so that's a very important golden rule!

Safe hacking,
AR

Hi dude,
systematic Wrote:
Thanks for the response. I have a few more questions in this regard.


[s] If anxiety can be unconscious, how would someone know when they're ready for these exercises?

When we do things in the right order and start getting to know ourselves, unconscious anxiety becomes more obvious to us; we recognize the signs, we start to see improvements in the way we feel and realize we were probably more anxious than we'd thought. We get to know what warning signs to look out for, we learn to stop anything when anxiety rises, we use tools that check unconscious anxiety levels and flash lights at us and give us numbers that don't lie. And all of this teaches us about the nature of anxiety itself and gives us real-life experience of how to calm ourselves down and how to ensure no unconscious anxiety is present.


[s] How would someone monitor their mind for problems when doing these exercises?

By any of the methods above, usually by self awareness from experience of what anxiety-onset feels like, or technology for those who are not so experienced (although if we're not experienced, we shouldn't be doing intermediate level exercises)  :  )

By intermediate level we should know ourselves well enough not only to recognize anxiety signs but also to avert them, we should know what our current limits are and what our current state is. In short, developing awareness of and control of anxiety is what 'graduates' us from beginners to adepts, because from that point on we have free will and there's nothing holding intelligence back.

[s] Should anxiety be the measure?

Well, the measure of what?  Anxiety is certainly a good reason to stop doing something, as that's the warning signal we are not ready for the 'something', whatever it is. Recall that stress is not anxiety and feeling a bit nervous about trying a new thing is actually good for learning, but we should never feel afraid or mentally uncomfortable. Think of it as lifting a weight that stretches your muscles = good but lifting a weight that strains your ligaments = bad. With the mind it's exactly the same situation. Stretching maintains and improves the capacity of a machine, organ, tissue, mind, brain or system, straining damages or breaks it.

Measuring anxiety itself by MRI or Cortisol levels can be used for calculating how much our intelligence is slowed down, how many networks are not getting their blood supply, and to estimate how fast we are likely to age.

Obviously there are other reasons than anxiety for stopping some practices, such as physical illness or injury, during recovery from same, and limitations for certain persons (for example epilepsy or migraine sufferers are not going to get along well with tech that uses flashing lights) and at certain times (don't start a new exercise when we have a steaming hangover or have just experienced trauma). Also, everybody's different and some will be allergic to some chemicals (I for example had to stop taking Gingko due to headaches).

[s] Is it possible major issues could develop overnight?

Yes. We could fall out of bed, there could be an earthquake or meteorite strike  :  )  Seriously, I don't know a single case where someone has gone to bed sane and woken up suddenly otherwise (although the internet being what it is, I'm sure somebody is claiming this somewhere). I do know of cases of sudden memory loss or death after sleeping on large quantities of drugs/alcohol or after an accident (not knowing at the time they had concussion, for example).

[s] Or could their emergence be spotted early on and disaster averted?

This depends on where people draw the line between 'acceptable' for a healthy brain and 'not acceptable'. I drew the line at waking up on an aircraft not remembering how I got there, where it had come from or where it was going. No more binge drinking for me! And I haven't since. Others may draw the line at 'getting a headache'. We are all different, and part of NH is building awareness of our own unique profile, knowing ourselves, and learning where we can push development without compromising anything.

The Golden Rules will save us from most forseeable problems. Forewarned is forearmed, and these rules are really our arsenal. They are based on nature's laws, which cannot be broken. Reality still operates even when people don't believe in it.

Best,
AR

Hi dude,
systematic Wrote:
Self-hypnosis is suggested as a means for reducing anxiety in tutorial 2, as is visualisation, but Sakiro's hackipedia tutorial is prefaced with a warning to people not to work on N3 until anxiety is under control. How should this be reconciled?

One way is, we control anxiety by other means than hypnosis until we are stable enough to use hypnosis.

Another way is, to use only some techniques of hypnosis (those least likely to seem 'scary', when hypnosis is an unknown), until we've gotten to feel safe enough with this method to try other techniques.

[s] Also, how long does it generally take someone to reach this intermediate stage?

OOh, difficult one...because this is sort of like asking, 'how long does it generally take for someone to run up 200,000 miles on the clock in a car?'

There is no 'generally'; we're all different. Born and raised in optimal conditions it takes from conception to around seven years or so to fully develop all three rear networks and use them competently, so that's the fastest we know it can be done. That's like owning a Ferrari with free fuel and having all day every day free to do nothing but drive with all our needs taken care of -we could run up that mileage in a very short time.

Most NH students are 'partway there' when they begin, but we have to develop N1 & N2 reasonably fully before progressing further; and our individual development is impacted by so many variables (the least of which is time made available to practice) it's impossible to predict for any individual.

What we CAN do is chart our own progress and estimate from there. You will notice progress comes in 'waves' -the peaks are actually brain growth spurts, and once we have gone through two of these, the time between them is roughly how long it will be before the next, given similar practice, state of health, starting state of network, and environment conditions. Each brain growth spurt signals the 'coming online' of another network, wired up by a critical mass of practice time using its skills.

Trouble is, some networks need more upgrading than others! So there is no clear way to predict unless we know ourselves really really well and remain in stable circumstances.
best,
AR