PT89

The past year I have seen my self deteriorate into a fraction of my former self. I was once excited to wake up for work because I loved helping patients each day and seeing them recover with an appreciation for the opportunity to do so. I felt a deep connection to everyone coming to see me. Unfortunately throughout COVID, this motivation and passion was gradually replaced by a complete lack of energy and desire not only in my work, but also in my every day life. And it’s only gotten worse despite taking numerous vacations in an attempt to mitigate this fatigue. From my research, I’ve come to understand that burnout is extremely common in my profession and also in my many others. Aside from my overall lack of energy and apathy towards the world, one of the most noticeable effects of my burnout was the amount of time I started devoting to reading the news and trying to figure out the truth with regards to everything covid related. My daily meditation routine was soon overridden by hours everyday researching the situations of many countries worldwide, trying to find patterns, and listening to opinions from as many perspectives as possible. Each day trying my hardest to discern what the correct perspective was. Never in my life have I seen issues emerge that are so captivating, thought provoking, yet furiously polarizing. A degree of polarization that has seen many mentors, healthcare professionals, and spiritual teachers that I look up to completely divided. And in my mind, some of these people had to clearly be right, and some people had to be wrong as rigid lines between the two were being drawn. Which side should I be on? Then came the knowing that I needed to detach entirely from these issues and the plethora of narratives around me if I ever wanted to feel myself again. I could finally feel my energy returning after a small amount of time spent in quiet relaxation and coming to an understanding of my own. The understanding that it is/was completely futile and energy wasting to spend my time trying to make a relative perspective into something absolute (people should do this, people shouldn’t do that). The egoic attachment to a belief on either side of the fence fueling the battle between groups of people now known as either “covidiots” and “sheep” is the very attachment preventing every individual from feeling what they desire. Both groups have those reacting to fear or loss of control. And it’s the extent of this fear/loss of control that permeates and perpetuates the mass division within our populations. I’ve lived the immense repercussions of analyzing a never-ending number of perspectives that has led me nowhere aside from chasing my own tail, having every viewpoint challenged by some form of new information or perspective. The only way I’ve been to feel myself again, to feel centered, to feel excited about life, was to let go of identification with any form of rigid belief, any form of attachment one way or the other. To let go of my need for knowing the truth, and to rest peacefully in not knowing. Paradoxically, it’s in this space of not needing to know that I’ve felt most capable and trusting in whatever decisions I would make in each moment. If I could share any advice for anyone feeling exhausted and uncertain, burned out and lacking control, know that you’re not alone. And know that it’s okay to not know the answer. I doubt if anyone has the full answer but I do know that it’s fully be possible for people to continue living joyously and compassionately even amidst the most difficult of times.

@Leo Gura Regarding that video yes that's what the kundalini transmission looks like. I've been doing it for 8 months now and attended an immersion weekend of it after which I developed the capacity to transmit myself. For anyone living in vancouver that's interested in experiencing this, feel free to send me a message as I'm trying to bring it to Canada.

From Leo's last video, he points out that different teachers are at very different levels of awakening. What teachers do you guys feel are some of the most deeply awakened (also direction this question to @Leo Gura)

I love this travel report, a lot of it resonated with me. This need to do certain things, take/post pictures for validation, wasting precious time outside of the daily personal development routine. From my experience, the deeper you go with this stuff, the more difficult it gets... I'm wondering if anyone else has similar feelings? I have indeed noticed myself unhappy with a lot of things, more noticing of a lot of bullshit around me, and in giving up a lot of my egos attachments to comfort, it certainly hasn't been easy. But there are then those miraculous moments I have, through insight or shifts in consciousness that keep me on this path of madness I've also noticed some very positive changes in my personality - such as no longer needing to win, but simply enjoying the game or sport for what it is. But the suffering persists... and I just try to have faith that this is what is necessary for real growth to happen. I'm planning on volunteering in nepal next december then heading to india afterwards for a vipassana retreat. Thanks for the info on your travel experience. It's hard for me to give you advice, because I seem to be in a pretty similar place in terms of just not being happy with the way things are right now, but I mean I should be... and you should be too... we've got a million things to be happy about but our minds just don't seem to want to let us. Have faith... Leo's opened my eyes to so many things I never would have imagined so I guess we just need to trust the process and persist.

As a former fan boy, I’ve recently come to conclude that JP does not grasp very well the essence of spirituality nor consciousness itself. In many of his speeches, he emphasizes that life is essentially suffering. And from a physical/materialistic standpoint, is seems to be just that. He’s intellectualized the crap out of this on a bigger picture, and he’s right. His solution? Pull up your bootstraps, work your way to the top of the dominance hierarchy, and act in good faith. Contrast this with two spiritual teachers that I’ve come to greatly appreciate for their wisdom – Eckart Tolle and Sadhguru. Everything they teach is pretty well aligned with Leo’s teachings, but obviously they fully embody what this stuff is all about. Leo understands it and articulates it incredibly well, but is still striving to embody it. They emphasize how miraculous life itself is and how appreciative we should be for the miracle of life we live everyday. Why such a difference in opinion from the intellectual juggernaut JP? Because they’ve recognized what they really are (consciousness) and see the world from a different perspective than you or me. They see it from a true perspective. I’ve gone through a lot of mental suffering recently, and come to notice that there are so many misguided resources for self help and spiritual work out there that completely miss the fundamental aspect to freedom. It can’t be explained any better than in this video through an analogy with diarrhea ? Take away message - you need to stop identifying yourself with things that you're not. And until you do, expect the misery continue. I finally had a big leap with my meditative practice that resonated very well with this video, and was seemingly able to separate my consciousness from thought at a far greater degree than I have before through a meditation session, and the peace that comes with that is incredible. You can continue having “negative” thoughts without feeling the usual emotional anguish that comes with them, and consciously choose not to follow them. They lost their power entirely. 3 years in on this path of personal development and pursuing a meaningful life purpose, and although there’s many ups and downs, it’s been a very nice reminder that while the path may be tremendously long and difficult, it’s well worth the effort. And if you find yourself thinking that you’ve only become more miserable because of pursuing a difficult life purpose/goal, well, just know that suffering can be an incredible catalyst for growth.

Sydney, Australia - 20% blue 80% orange

I've probably flip flopped my opinion in politics about 100X over the past few years since coming to actualized.org and enjoy learning more/seeing modern issues be debated. Would like to hear other people's opinions on certain things since we're all open minded people and can accept opposing views Capitalism- Yes it's the best we've come up with and has led to prosperity - however, the more i ponder it the more i think a highly capitalist system leads to inherent selfishness, and a need to be better than others, and yields capitalist "winners" like donald trump. We know for a fact that psychological disorders are skyrocketing, I think in Australia 1/5 people has either an anxiety or depressive disorder. Jordan Peterson's answer for this is to just focus on the individual, but I think this is much more of a systemic issue, a consequence of a system built on winners and losers. Obviously ideally they'd teach something like self-actualization early on in schools, they'd teach empathy, but these aren't valued in our system to a high degree. Wealth and "power" are what is prioritized in our system. Identity Politics - Very much dislike them, have only seen toxicity result and create hate between genders, races etc, but this just could have been from my limited experience. Very much in JP's camp with this. Free speech - very against the violence ive seen exhibited by mainly the radical left when speaking out against certain groups. I've felt very policed in my speech because of consequences I think generated by identity politics. If I were to speak out, for example, against capitalism (not saying i'm against capitalism), i think it would not be right for me to be attacked, the same way some of these other controversial speakers (milo) get berated for having different beliefs. Would like to hear some other opinions on these topics, or other political issues. Hopefully all civil conversations that we can learn from.

We all have dark times and addictions can be extremely tough to beat. I think a valuable lesson to learn when trying to conquer any addiction is not to beat yourself up when you fail, as it's those negative thoughts that work to perpetuate the cycle. Even if you think you're back at square 1, you're definitely not. Just in writing what you did, shows how conscious you are of everything that's going on in your life, and the progress you've made. What you see as failure is not really failure unless you see it as such. Try viewing it instead as another lesson, another opportunity where you were able to become more conscious. From my experience, results with this personal development work manifest very slowly, and it's difficult to notice these changes without being very conscious in the first place (catch 22). My best advice would be to just keep at it, have faith, and watch some eckart tolle videos while you're at it if you're feeling overwhelmed/down and out. Cheers!

Thought I'd see if there's any like-minded people in the area who have been doing this work diligently for a while

I grew up with an extreme attachment to "winning" and needing to be more competent than others at things I see as important, sports, academics etc. Since starting my journey inwards of self-actualization, I've made a lot of progress towards being more content with life in general, however, I still find myself overly upset when I lose to a rival in a sport, or do poorly relative to my standards in my post grad. I've built this image of myself that leads to a lot of unhappiness when I don't live up to my standards. I've become much more socially isolated since moving to a new country to do my Doctorate, and as Jordan Peterson explains, when this occurs, and when you're not succeeding, your biology takes over and essentially makes you stressed out in order to do whatever it takes to get yourself into a better situation. This sort of feeds back into "needing" to succeed and needing to win, making one unhappy otherwise. But from all my work here, it seems that what I actually want is to be low status, to be at peace with not succeeding, to enjoy the process rather than the outcome. Unfortunately, working towards this just seems to bring me more unhappiness, and makes me more susceptible to further stress. I try to be as conscious of these negative emotions as I can when they arise after something so simple as losing a tough match, yet they don't seem to be getting much better because I feel my biology is just programmed to do its best to get me out of the situation, and it NEEDS to find a way to succeed, and that means not being satisfied with anything but. It seems to me like it's a battle between my motivation to shatter my ego by shining consciousness on what I perceive as bad circumstances vs my programmed biology, and it's a very difficult conflict. Anyone have any tips for overcoming this?

Happy Birthday! Don't even wanna imagine where my life would be without your youtube channel.

Studying in Sydney, Australia but from Vancouver, Canada

"I watch porn and I don't feel bad about it. I don't view it as an addiction. The body has sexual cravings that need to be satisfied." How often would you say you watch porn on average? I think porn is one of the most difficult addictions to overcome precisely because the body has sexual cravings that we think NEED to be satisfied. You've definitely mentioned in some of your episodes that porn can be an addiction and is a low-conscious activity. I'm sure there's a lot of people on here that have noticed porn impacting their life negatively - one such thing I believe it leads to is objectifying women (or men) and greatly increasing one's sex drive, which leads to a LOT more craving. Do you really think porn is a harmless activity in moderation? This is very controversial, high debated issue, and I keep flipping back and forth as my motivation to be free of porn wavers. As someone I look up to, your opinion holds a lot of weight, but I'm quite surprised that you haven't seemed to notice any negative impacts in your life from porn.

@ULFBERHT great post, love the "just show up" mentality.

You should develop yourself to the point where you'd feel bad for her for needing to do this. Something obviously wasn't right in your relationship, and she decided she needed to lie and find whatever she was missing in someone else. Maybe she just likes to get fucked, but do you really think that that would lead her to a meaningful life? Also, is that somebody you'd want to be with in the first place? Tinder ain't the problem, undeveloped people are the problem.