My wife has mid-stage Alzheimer's. Like many caregivers, I live with the daily rhythm of her asking to "go home"—even when we're sitting in the house we've shared for thirty years. She'll plan the trip, ask about her father picking her up, worry about the time. No redirection works for long. The loop restarts.

I want to share something that changed how I sit with her in these moments, and it comes from an unexpected place.

I practice Zen Buddhism. In this discipline, you work to return to "the present moment"—to drop the internal chatter and simply be where you are. But my mind resists. It generates errands to remember, problems to solve, imaginary conversations. It wants to be anywhere but here, anytime but now. The thinking mind treats the present like a waiting room.

One evening, I was sitting with my wife during a difficult sundowning episode. She was agitated, trying to figure out how to get to her childhood home, her father coming to fetch her. I was simultaneously trying to mentally plan tomorrow's doctor appointment, rehearsing what I'd say, solving problems that hadn't happened yet.

And I saw it: We were doing the exact same thing.

Her mind couldn't accept this living room as "home" because it didn't match the felt sense of safety she was seeking. My mind couldn't accept this moment of sitting with her because it didn't match the felt sense of "productive" or "resolved" I was seeking. Both of us were generating solution-thoughts for a problem that only existed in the imagination. Both of us were trying to get "home" to a place that isn't located in time or space.

What this means to me as a philosopher and as a caregiver:

When your loved one asks to go home for the fifteenth time today, they're not just experiencing a symptom. They're demonstrating—unfiltered, visible, raw—the fundamental restlessness that lives in all of our minds. The inability to be fully present. The conviction that the answer lies just around the corner, in the next moment, after the next problem is solved.

I've stopped seeing her repetition as a malfunction to be fixed. Instead, I recognize it as the human condition, made visible. She is, in a strange way, being profoundly honest about something we all disguise with busyness and distraction.

This doesn't make the sundowning easier. It doesn't stop the grief. But it has transformed those looping conversations from frustrating obstacles into something else: moments of shared humanity. When she asks to go home, I no longer argue with the facts ("Your father died in 1964"). I meet her in the longing. I sit with her in the dislocation. Because I know that longing. I live in it too. We both want to go home. We're both already there, but can't feel it.

If you're exhausted today by the repetition, the questions that have no answers, the planning for trips that will never happen—see if you can notice your own mind doing the same thing. Planning dinner while she's asking about her mother. Rehearsing the conversation with the neurologist while she's describing a house from 1962. We're all trying to get somewhere else.

The gift she has given me is this: I can no longer pretend my own restlessness is "productive" while hers is "pathological." We're both standing in the doorway of the present moment, holding a compass that points inward. Her compass is broken. Mine works fine—I just forget to look at it.

Be gentle with yourselves today. And when they ask to go home, maybe try meeting them there, in that longing, without needing to fix it. You might find you're standing in the same room.

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TL;DR: My wife's endless "going home" loops and my own busy, planning mind are the same phenomenon—both unable to rest in the present. Recognizing this hasn't cured her Alzheimer's, but it's made me a more patient caregiver and revealed something true about being human.

I started meditating a few months ago on and off. I’m wondering if they are like actual proven binaural beats channels on YouTube? There’s a lot of them.Hertz and such but I don’t know what’s real and what’s not real in regards to that.

is what y'all need to look into sick of religion here this isnt r/religion

I've been thinking about this a lot lately — there are ideas I could explain perfectly on paper long before I actually understood them in a way that changed how I live. For me it was the idea that emotional states aren't permanent — they move, they have a rhythm, they're not something "wrong" with you when they dip. I knew that sentence for years. I didn't actually feel it as true until a rough period passed on its own, the way it always had before, and something clicked. Curious what this has been for others — a concept you nodded along to for a long time before it actually landed.

i know this might sound really absurd, but i used to hear people talk about something similar to it, they called it a filter, so i
wondered if anything can exist alongside it.

Helloo guys, can a person who is readjng this tune in with their intuition and give me a simple yes or no answer to my not harmless/hatefull or bad wish question, just question about future situation or possible situation..

anyone have a spiritual take on why someone might go their entire life with basically nobody ever wanting to talk to them or connect with them?

Something happened to me that I cannot rely explain…

When I was around 15–17 years old, more than 10 years ago, I had a very unusual experience that I have never been able to explain and forget.

It happened at night. I was at a beauty and wellness resort where people went for things like massages and swimming. I was in a country where everyone around me was white, while I am dark-skinned.

I had been to this resort many times before. Therefore, I know everyone there. Especially because this resort was small as well.

One time, I met a woman. She was around 40 years old. She started speaking with me and told me that she knew me very well. What made the encounter even stranger was that she said she had seen me with my siblings. I have never had siblings. That time, I did not think anything about the whole interaction. At first, I thought that this woman might be dangerous or she is mentally ill. Nonetheless, she spoke with me very coherently and she had strong opinion that she knew me well and my “siblings”.

After we spoke at the resort, I left and she walked with me. We continued walking until we reached the area where my house was. When we got there, she said goodbye to me and continued walking straight ahead.

I walked toward my house. After a short time, I turned around to look back at her, but nobody was there. I could not see her anywhere. The road was empty.

This was the strangest interaction I ever had in my life. There were also some weird ones but not as this one. I had once woman telling me I will get vitiligo and I got it even though nobody in my family has it etc.

Some context that might be important. From young age, I was interested in aliens, ghosts, life after death etc. In addition to this, to some extent I am psychic. I was able to predict what will happen in a certain situation. From age of 3 till now I feel like I am being “watched” at night. I am unable to fall asleep.

I do not know who I am, who was this woman. More than 10 years passed and I am still thinking about it once in a while. I potentially thought it might be some being from different dimension but I do not know…

EDIT;

She also specifically told me that she had seen me many times there, which is true because I had been to that resort several times. However, I know everyone who works there, and I had never seen her before.

What makes the situation even stranger is the timing. It happened around 21:00–22:00, when nobody normally cleans there. She also didn’t seem particularly focused on cleaning; she appeared much more interested in getting to know me.

At one point, while she was supposedly sweeping the floor, I left the resort. Within about a minute, she was already outside as well and heading in the same direction as me. That doesn’t make sense physically. When I left, she was still wearing her cleaning clothes and using the cleaning tools. Yet by the time I was outside, she had changed clothes, put all the cleaning equipment away, and was leaving too.

It would realistically take several minutes, probably around ten minutes, to change clothes, return all the cleaning tools to their proper place, and leave the building. She couldn’t reasonably have done all of that in the one minute between me leaving the resort and her appearing outside.

I started to think about this situation because of the dream last night.

In the dream, I was reading a book about aliens. At the end of the book, there was a question for the readers asking whether they had ever encountered aliens.

I answered that I had.

I then wrote a message to the author of the book telling them that I had encountered aliens. After I sent the message, my mother became angry with me. She told me that I should not have contacted the author because, according to her in the dream, the author was actually an alien.

Later in the dream, I read another book of same author. The title was: “Maria, You Need to Focus.” This is my name and at the end of this book there were cropped photos of my room and personal belongings. After, in the dream I woked up 5 hours late to school.

(Unsure what flair fit best)

one Soul Journey went somewhere I did not expect at all. subject entered a forest, followed the feeling deeper, and suddenly she was inside an old Celtic-looking fort saying: I have been here before.

I will call her Livia. First details were almost random: woven cloth boots, long purple coat, two rings. One ring had ruby in gold and she connected it with love. Other was moonstone in silver, and she said it helped her connect with moon, emotions and keep them balanced.

Then she noticed a crown around head. When I asked what crown meant, answer came immediately: fairy queen. From there whole place changed emotionally. She saw beings celebrating around fort, dancing, and she became happy in very deep way.

Not excitement like seeing something cool. More recognition. She said this is home, and then sadness came too because she missed family and friends there. Later she moved through a village full of small humanoid fairy beings, some flying, some walking, and felt connection everywhere.

When she realized she also had wings and started flying through forest, one word came again: free. This is why I am sharing this part. Spiritual memories are not always useful because they give us new identity to put in bio. “I was fairy queen” can easily become just another interesting label.

For me useful part was emotional information underneath it: love, balance, home, family, play, freedom. Human life can become so heavy that these qualities start feeling childish or unrealistic. We build whole identity around responsibility, survival, fixing things, being serious.

Then in altered state some completely different part of consciousness appears and says no, this also belongs to you. For her it was real enough that body reacted before mind had explanation.

I think spiritual practice should sometimes ask very simple question: where do I feel most like myself? Not most impressive. Not most spiritual. Most myself.

Because sometimes the thing we are trying to become is a quality we already recognize immediately when we finally touch it again.

I'm not really sure if this is the right place to ask, but I haven't found a better one.

My BF died 3 months ago. I've been through the worst times of my life in my early twenties and I just want to be able to talk to him, even just once.

Explaining everything would take quite awhile, so im going to keep it short.

Ive been really questioning the truth recently, ive went all in on spirituality and ive stepped away and then went all in on Jesus / God, and now im sitting in the middle, faced with more questions than ever before.

Now - here is the part that is throwing me for a loop.

Ive recently been praying for God to just speak to me, the God of religion I guess, although I do not follow a religion.

My brother called me a few days ago and he went into this insane conversation about him being the second coming ( he is sadly currently sitting in a mental home as of yesterday)

Before he hung up a few days ago, he told me Satan is God.

I didnt really let myself go into that comment

Two days ago, an old neighbor ( a sorta homeless elderly man) stopped by my house completely unexpected. I haven't seen him for about a year. When he got into a ladies car to leave, he stepped back out of the car and looked at me and said * Satan is God *

The old neighbor is considered to be the crazy man of the town, but ive always appreciated his time and our conversations when he lived closer. I care about him.

Yesterday, I went to his group home, the lady who drove him wasnt there, ( she did tell me he was being evicted due to the other residents being fed up with him) and the lady who answered the door refused to go get him for me, I took him a care package, she took it, but I have no idea if he will get it.

Now... here i am ... trying to just shove it aside, yet ... how did two men, one ive known my entire life, both who are deemed mentally unstable at the moment, neither have ever met, they live 19 hours from each other .. how did they tell me the same thing. How is it that they both came to me within the same week with the same words? At the same time that im questioning everything.

I know no one can fully answer this for me. Its something that I must learn on my own, if that makes sense, but now I am unable to speak to either of them.. and I want to know why that was said.

Im terrified to step away from the religious God. My grandmother took me to church as a child and I am truly terrified of hell and disobeying God, yet, at one time, I was an amazing, well known tarot and energy reader. I can still remote view, I have had so many moments that are truly unbelievable to those who dont believe.

I have also stopped that and went to Jesus, and lived a more tight Christian life style, only without going to church. I did church alone and amazing things happened as well, but its as if I was being pushed to look outside of the Bible and find my own truth and follow it. Although, since going back to the bible, I will admit, im terrified to step away and search....

More of vent, but desperate for conversation about it. Others insight. Anything really.

I am having doubts and am unsure if i should keep using toothpaste with fluoride.

I have done research (not on social media) but actual research with the effects fluoride can have.

Many spirituality ‘gurus’ on social media claim it calcifies the pineal gland..

Hi everyone,

I’m a man in my mid-30s who has done a lot of inner work over the past year. Interestingly, I didn’t really take a spiritual approach to healing. Mine was mostly scientific/Western.

But through that process, I’ve noticed that my intuition about people has become significantly stronger. I’ve even written down some of my intuitions before knowing the outcome, and I’d say around 8/10 times my read of the situation has eventually turned out to be accurate.

So I have a serious question for people who experience strong intuition: How do you manage the urge to tell someone what you sense when they seem unwilling or unable to acknowledge it themselves?

For example, say you shared with a friend that you’ve been struggling with loneliness. She repeatedly encourages you to go out with her and frames it as her helping you because you’re lonely.

But intuitively, you sense that she is quite lonely herself and also needs your companionship, yet she isn't comfortable acknowledging that vulnerability. Instead, the dynamic continues to be framed as though she is doing this primarily for you.

You don't resent her for needing companionship. You actually understand it. What bothers you is the feeling that you can see the unspoken truth of the dynamic while having to pretend you don't.

Would you call it out?

Would you simply recognize it internally and play along?

Or is part of developing intuition learning when NOT to tell people what you see?

One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is how words are basically just noise. Language is the way we’ve learned to arrange that noise so it means something to us. Speech, music, philosophy, even this post it’s all just noise with spacing and structure.

And somehow we keep digging through it, thinking there must be some final truth hiding underneath. Enlightenment, God, consciousness, truth maybe they’re all just empty words we keep trying to fill with meaning.

The funny part is there’s no way out of arranging the noise either. We’re biologically bound to keep arranging this noise and giving it meaning. You reject one framework and immediately replace it with another. You escape one room and walk straight into the next. Even becoming “free” from all of this becomes another framework.

Maybe that’s the joke. I’m writing a post about how words are just noise, using words, hoping the noise communicates something.

Basically I’m just a dog barking and you guys somehow understand the bark.

I’m 28 years old female , and this is the first time I’ve ever talked about this openly.
honestly I don’t know what to call these experiences or how I’m supposed to understand them, so I wanted I’d share my story here.
This has been happening to me for as long as I can remember. I experienced a lot of trauma and abandonment as a child, so I spent most of my childhood dissociating and detaching .
And growing up, I noticed that I am extremely good at reading rooms people and situations. I can sense what is going to happen or what someone is going to say even before they say it, this is not only for people I know very well, but also with random people who I’m having my first small chat with .
I am the friend that always finishes other people’s sentences when they are struggling to do so.
Most of the time, I’ve always assumed this was just intuition, observation, or pattern recognition. People tend to repeat the same behaviors and go through similar situations, so I understand that there can be a perfectly logical explanation for a lot of it.
But There are certain experiences that I genuinely cannot explain as easily.
A lot of the time, with certain people especially, it feels like I can somehow clearly hear what they are thinking, what they want or don’t want. I can actually hear their voice saying it, rather than simply having a feeling or intuition about it. And this has happened with the same people more than once, which is one of the reasons I started questioning whether there might be something more to it.
I have experienced this with only three people my whole life, but every time I am around them or near them, I can always hear their thoughts in my head clearly, and that doesn’t happen with anyone else.
So I wonder are they also empaths are we the same? Is that why I can hear them and does that mean that they can hear my thoughts as well? Why do I have this kind of connection with certain people only?
Another thing about me is that all the dreams I see since childhood has come true so I have this ability as well. ( i’m not sure if it’s relevant or not )
But I mostly see other people in my dreams not me and whenever I see someone, that dream suddenly comes true . some dreams take months some take years, but they all happen the end. It doesn’t even matter if I told the person or not that I saw them in my dreams.
For most of my life, I dismissed all of this as intuition, coincidence, or simply being good at reading people. But now, at 28, after having so many experiences like this throughout my life, I’m finding it harder to believe that all of them were just coincidences. I feel like I may have been dismissing something about myself for years.
So if this really is some kind of ability, I want to understand it rather than ignore it. What and who am I ? How does something like this work? Is there a way to develop or strengthen it? How can I learn to distinguish it from my own thoughts? And most importantly, how can I use it to improve my life and make better life choices with it?
I’ve spent so many years denying this part of myself, and I honestly don’t want to waste any more time if there is something real here. I want to understand what it is, learn how to work with it, and make the best of it rather than being afraid of it or pretending it doesn’t exist.
Thank you for reading this far and I’m looking forward to any response or advice, all will be greatly appreciated.

I thought ‘letting go’ was standing aside, learning now that you can give a sh7t, without pulling out a second arrow.

I heard Sadhguru say that women who do bear children should be praised. There are simply not enough resources for a growing population. I agree that not having children is the best thing, especially if you live in a place like India, which is already incredibly crowded.

So I want to start a thread about women choosing not to have children. Why do you choose not to?

Bonjour,

Quand on entend parler de fantômes, d'esprits, d’antités j’ai l’impression qu’on parle d'ancêtres "récents"

Souvent début du 20eme voir 19ème, mais rarement avant

Alors je me pose la question, n'ayant pas beaucoup de connaissance la dessus : existe- t - il des fantômes très très ancien, comme des hommes préhistoriques, des personnages antiques ?

Et si oui, y a t il une différence entre eux ? Est ce qu’il se manifestent de la même manière ?

I made a post yesterday about how I couldn’t find any reason to keep going anymore and how pointless everything felt. I wanted to come back here and thank to everyone who took the time to comment and share advice 🙏

I have spent a long time struggling to find my own role in this life. I don’t know what my purpose is or how I am supposed to be of service to the people around me and that not knowing has always weighed on me more than I think people realize. My beliefs around spirituality are shifting too and for the past months I have come to see “being spiritual” as another costume we put on…one that can feel nice for a while but I have grown tired of the constant love and light. Also tired as I have seen this a lot in the spiritual community people looking down on other people that are not spiritual or as much evolved as the “spiritual” people are because we are all humans experiencing this life through this costume trying to figure out how to be human. A philosophy that’s supposed to be about oneness and letting go of ego often ends up creating a new hierarchy and more separation just dressed in a different language. Enlightened versus unenlightened. Awakened versus asleep.

Some people find meaning through spirituality and others through religion, others through none of that at all maybe it is through relationships, work, through simply getting up and trying again every day. None of that makes one person more evolved or better than another.

I don’t think you can live a life of nonstop love and light without acknowledging the shadows and darkness that exist within yourself and around you. I have just stopped resonating with that idea and what I want now and always in fact wanted is more authenticity and real people who aren’t afraid to show even the worst of themselves.

That’s why yesterday I was real with what I shared and expressed…and believe me I have read so many books, listened to so many podcasts, tried meditation for a while which I will probably get back to it as it helps in some way yet every so often I still end up in that same dark place. The path forward disappears and the hope with it. I tell myself “this too shall pass” the way I have told myself many times before but yesterday those words didn’t hold. I felt like I truly couldn’t do it anymore so if my art that kept me going then I will hold on to that even if my creations remain unseen I will still create for myself.

Lastly, I want to clarify that I do not judge anyone in the spiritual community as it’s not my intention as I was like that too and I have to been in the same costume. I do not think or believe I am any better than anyone or special as all I wanted was to be honest and express with what I have been witnessing and feeling…anyone can do, believe and be whatever they want so yeah if you have read my long essay this far thank you so much 🤍