why do you want to escape these questions? Why not let the questions be a point of return for your mind as you let your imagination take you? the questions only hurt when you need an answer. So perhaps this is a good question to dwell on: what is the answer you're REALLY looking for? You may find that the answer you are looking for is the cause of your feeling restricted.

Music wise, check out Joseph Jacobs on YouTube, its great music for imagining. Also, I think you'll like this song and associated music. Nujabes - Yes ft. Pase Rock (2011)
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=2MPfx_Aa94o

I find it really hard to focus/fixate myself toward anything without questioning its worth, refusing to participate in the everyday distraction. It's almost as if the life we (think we) 'know' was designed to be that way. — Reece

It's nice to talk with someone who speaks the same language. All day everyday my mind tunes into what people say and do, and how things work around me, why they exist and what function they serve...and like you say, usually the thoughts I have are that most of what people do is a distraction that keeps everyone's minds boxed in. For a while I hated that I did this because it ostracized me from society, yet without giving a better alternative. But now it's like that constant thought process and self awareness is what grounds me in reality and gives me life - living with my inner and outer eyes open.

I'm with unenlightened, confratulations! Wakeful dreamers indeed. I'm 24 as well and I've written journal entries upon journal entries with 100 different ways of expressing what you did in your post...the dreaded feeling of hopelessness tagged along to a frighteningly real perspective that everything people claim to "know" is guessworkand it doesn't seem like there are any answers out there that will quell your search for true knowledge about this life.

After growing up with a strong desire to learn from and become like Jesus, ghandi, Buddha, etc, I plummeted deep into despair when I first grasped the possibility that all of my beliefs were concepts that were only as real as I believed them to be. For a few years I was up and down depressed and bipolar, with an ever decreasing motivation for anything other than searching for truth, always grasping onto new revelations but soon after seeing how limited that revelation was.

It sounds to me like you are in a similar boat that I was; with a mind constantly seeking truth but unable to find any in the world around you. keep going! In plato's allegory of the cave (check it out if you haven't read it), you have just realized that you have been living in a dark cave watching a projection of reality constructed onto a screen. You've turned away from the screen in search of something real, but all you can see is darkness around you. But if you keep walking, you'll start to see there is light at an opening, and one day you'll make it out and see the world for yourself. That day is inevitable, just keep going! A mentor of mine stresses that the most difficult and important thing as a truth seeker is to have a "tolerance for ambiguity."

Right now, it might seem depressing to think that you perceive only your own truths, but eventually you will see that truth is not a single idea of concept to hold onto. That is a lie we are trained to depend on that keeps us and mentally immature as a child! Truth is not an idea to lock down but insight revealed moment by moment. When you can tap into this, the sun comes out, and it shines brighter than ever.

This is the truth I currently stand on, which is what transformed me from being stuck in a cycle of despair all around me to seeing it trailing far behind.

Some of My significant influences contributing to my journey were Alan watts, Chuang tzu, zen.

Safe travels!

LOL

I'm glad you shared that dream, It's interesting to hear how that dream affected you afterward. Also, i understand what you meant when you said "emotions are considerably reduced in dreams in order for us to afterwards take in the lessons on offer."

I agree that emotions can be reduced in dreams. It seems like they can be, on the one end, non existent, which can enable you to dream of taking risks and exploring possibilities without emotions like fear or insecurity hindering the possibilities. On the other hand, I've had dreams where an emotion (even a sensation, like falling or the sound of a gunshot) was so strong that the dream felt like reality. Perhaps this can be considered one of the unique functions of the human mind -- that it can be selective about how it explores the universe.

Take, for example, Someone who is afraid of speaking in public. Every time they step up in front of a group of people they freeze up. By dreaming over and over if standing up in front of people without fear, exuding confidence, authority and excitement, perhaps one day when they stand in front of people they will fall into being confident, authoritative, and excited.

The mind holds the key to enlightening and forging new possibilities. Thoughts?

I had a similar thought like this a while back, though I was thinking that the universe(s) are moving away from the original center but are on a sort of gravitational bungi cord and eventually the universe will be pulled back and collapse in on itself.
I have no knowledge of cosmology, this is simply a poetic possibility.

Ha! Though I can think of many times when I dreamed and can remember having visceral emotional responses, particularly fear. Perhaps it's not that emotions are reduced, but that you simply wish you could work naked!

How I see it, politics is about controlling human activity. Control enables social goods, including infrastructure, law and order, economics, policing. In order to maintain control over civilization, there needs to be public acceptance, and where this is lacking, coercive force is required. Coercive force most obviously included armies and weapons, but conceptual coercion is, I think, the foundation of society. Looking specifically at justice and morality, these are concepts, and they only hold any force so long as people give them power, either through voluntary knowing agreement or by the "you ought to do it" argument.

Thus, I define politics simply as the art of manipulation. I wouldn't define politics as "good." It can either be a necessary evil or an evil. As long as politics is necessary, culture will Always promote a form of ideological slavery (indoctrination). Acting morally and being led to believe one must act morally are very different.

that's a good point, I didn't think of emotions. what are your thoughts on what the emotional experience provides? And how does it relate to sense and cognitive experience?

this gets me thinking...so do you like dreaming because it creates opportunity to take risk and experience something new through action in the world...or do you also like dreaming just for its own sake, without giving thought to acting on it?

I'm with you on that. Makes me think that our attraction to this experience of pursuing novel ideas is where curiosity comes from; If desire is the pursuit of sensory pleasures, then curiosity is the pursuit of "cognitive pleasure." So then, is the goal of the cognitive aspect of consciousness to get lost in novel ideas? I can only see two aspects of consciousness: sensory and cognitive...that would mean our life is made of sensory stimulation and cognitive observance. Is that where the human experience ends, or is there more to us?