tsuki

Monks and outcasts realize what it's all about because they have no stake in it. You can even figure out what life itself is, if you practice death (meditation). What is the reward? Nothing.

I just realized that I feel inferior to women. I need to contemplate that.

I remember @Serotoninluv posted this playlist once: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5KWf8H2pM0tlVd7niMtqeU?si=yhKSXy4mQyGhzyORnl0jGQ

Knowledge implies subject-object separation. You cannot know the Truth, but you can know that you are it.

Yes, I believe that these observations are valid. It is much easier to destroy ourselves nowadays because the technology is much more advanced. Technology is a lever that multiplies our capabilities, but if the intent to use it is unwise, then it creates all sorts of problems. Some say that this is what happens when the rate of technological growth is greater than the rate of cultural growth. I don't view this problem in a linear way like that. Spiral dynamics is a crisis-driven model and I believe that the mass destruction of environment and mental health is one of them. It resembles the shock that needs to happen for a stage orange ego to evolve into green. I believe that the solution to this problem does not lie in more technological development. Stage green is a very strange stage because it had collected a massive shadow and the only way to proceed is to backtrack, acknowledge, and heal it. I believe that this is the only way for us that is predicted with this model. During the first couple's therapy session, I was confronted with my shadow regarding women. It traced all the way back to my early childhood and to my relationship with my mother. I'm still healing it.

Definitely not an expert on feminism, but the mother's behavior does not surprise me. She was probably letting her husband exploit her sexually, without having the freedom to express her preferences. Not saying that it's her fault, this pattern goes thousands of years into the past and each generation was re-creating the conditions to repeat it. She woke up to that. When I wake up from unconscious behavior and see the harm it created, it's difficult to not try to go to the other end of the spectrum. When we repress a part of ourselves, we become an expert at recognizing and judging it. Doing that outwardly, towards other people, is a natural consequence.

Guys want sex, so they include lots of sex into a top-tier man construct. Then, they proceed to judge women for having sex with the top-tier man instead of them. Isn't it ridiculous?

@Raw Nature I'm sorry, I didn't intend to offend you. I realized that the first part of my post was very arrogant so I deleted it, but not quickly enough. For the past few hundred years, humans are creating technology at exponential rate. I find no reason to doubt that solutions will be found once we collectively care to ask the right questions. The problem is, we don't care and it is not an issue of intelligence (in the common sense of the word). That is my opinion and I feel entitled to it. Have a good day.

Like I said, I'm not interested in debating you, just wanted to share an awesome piece of art. Treat it as a counter-example. When it comes to raising consciousness, I have never felt limited by technology, on the contrary. It's just a matter of asking the right questions. It's not a matter of competition. Highly conscious people will find a way to survive and create their content. Just look at this place. It's not for everybody and for a good reason.

I disagree with the intention to create a narrative that foresees the downfall of humanity. Technology is a tool to manipulate the world to suit our needs and it has both the creative and destructive potential. Your assessment of the destructive side is accurate, but it does not exhaust the topic. Your fear prevents you from seeing the bright side that brings equilibrium in your narrative. What we need is not intelligence (in the common sense of the word), but rather open hearts that will prevent us from destroying ourselves. No mind-centered solution can suffice, as the best a mind can do is create morality that is just another form of technology. The cohesive that keeps us from killing each other is empathy, the ability to feel each other's pain. Without it, we will exploit each other to no end. As for solution, I'm not even sure if there is a problem to begin with.

Not agreeing with all of your points, but wanted to share this piece of art that has been circulating the forum every now and then. Your post tells me that like you will enjoy it:

Just giving this gem another chance to be read. I wholeheartedly agree. The attitude towards Peterson that is enabled by administration of this forum is very unfortunate. I believe that this is the case.

That is yellow territory, it maintains orange pragmatism while tapping green creativity. When you go into yellow, you will be able to navigate the relationships with these people through your own experience at being these stages. The particular green idealist you're dealing with has an orange shadow. He skipped a stage because he couldn't handle it (for various legitimate reasons), so when you touch that area, he gets defensive. The shift out of orange into green happens because of awareness of orange's destructive excesses. When green heals itself, uncovers and embraces its layers, it transitions into yellow.

Trauma, by definition, is the emotional stimulus that the person is not equipped to process. Seeking relief by avoidance is the right way to deal with it in the short term, when you are supposed to deal with objective damage of the event and arrange your life in a safe way. The problem is that we're not taught the steps that follow, which enable the actual processing of the event in the safe space that has been created. If you don't consciously choose to heal and process the trauma, it will ferment until the patterns that the ego learned to cope with are no longer sufficient to distract you. Then, you turn malicious and self-destructive, out of desperation. I wholeheartedly disagree. There is no such thing as deliberate self-destruction. There is only lack of self-knowledge that leads to bad decision making. Ignorance, if not addressed, can turn into malicious desperation that seeks relief in destruction of others to justify itself, but it has to be reinforced through years of self-neglect. The ego is not evil. Evil does not exist. You cannot face the "trying circumstances" if the previous ones broke you and you haven't healed. Remember that children have much lower trauma threshold than adults. What causes PTSD in a soldier is very different from what causes it in a newborn. Bad parenting is enough to create a lot of trauma, not to mention the superstitions about newborns that circulate hospitals. Supposedly, until 1980 there was a superstition that newborns do not feel pain the same way as adults do, so some doctors performed invasive procedures without anesthesia. Horrifying. Other superstitions include the belief that if you address every whim of a newborn and answer every cry, then you are teaching it to be overly reliant in life. So, some parents decide to let the child cry until it has no more strength left. That in turn teaches the child that crying is useless and that help will not come. This causes a life-long pattern of suppression of emotions which forces the body to accumulate them. It causes feelings of estrangement and the belief that the world is a dog-eat-dog place. It gets reinforced by over-reliance on the mind and general cunning, manipulation, etc. Getting to the bottom of it requires the person to acknowledge a lot of hurt it had inflicted unto the world, which is more difficult with age. Psychology is very, very nonlinear and tricky. Actually, in the earliest stages of child development, addressing every whim of a child is absolutely necessary to develop a healthy ego. I suggest reading Homecoming by John Bradshaw for more information. Alternatively, look up Erik Erikson's model of psychosocial development.

@TheAvatarState Your definition of ego is very specific and highly non-conventional. You were programming that machine that runs your life ever since you were a child so that you could serve a role, purpose, in your environment. The problem does not lie in programming, or performing a role, but rather in the fact that you were not conscious of how the machine works. You did not even know that machine is there and you did not know that it will carry the patterns into your adult life. The patterns it learned were appropriate in the context of their creation, but they are self-destructive now because your environment changed. "The ego" as you call it, does not have a will of its own. It's just psychological momentum that repeats patterns that you taught it. That is lack of emotional maturity and lack of understanding of your emotional needs. Not the machine's fault. It's usually a result of bad parenting, trauma or emotional neglect. Addictions serve a specific role in addict's life. They are meant to distract the addict from emotional pain and fear. They are often rooted in traumatic experiences that were not dealt with properly. This is ignorance in programming, not the machine's fault. Notice that all of these are self-judgments oriented towards the past. You are judging others for judging others. The self is conceptual and this concept has nothing in reality to correspond with it.

Do you realize that if there is no free will, then the decision to live or not cannot be made? From the point of view of no free will, this question is meaningless. I think that you're trying to jump too far ahead in your reasoning. It is something akin to intuition, are you intuitive? When you want to make a decision, a choice is waiting for you, then intuition may present itself and speak to you. Even though it appears as something external, as if something was imposing a solution, you know that this solution is "special", "right" and "freeing". If you submit yourself to intuition, you feel free. This is what no free will looks like in enlightenment. If you have free will, then try to choose to align yourself with the world instead of trying to align it to your preferences. Surrender to the present moment, deliberately. Without sufficient purity of the mind and body, enlightenment experiences can be unstable. They feel overwhelming sometimes, but they feel right if you are ready for them.

My self-care routines are falling apart. I gained 4 kgs because of my "self-love" which manifested as allowing myself for sweet snacks after dinner. For the past few days I wanted to share the meals with my wife so I was cooking for both of us. I don't feel like doing that anymore. Our cooking stopped being independent and I wonder whether that's good or not. I don't know. From today on I will start counting calories and I'm setting my limit for 2300/day. I also returned to massaging my neck because it's gotten stiff lately. Thankfully, the shopping routine is still in order, but I'm running out of ideas for snacks during the day. Fruits are not satisfying and I'm not calorie-aware of other foods so they contribute to my weight gain.

Excellent post! Thank you!

On the symbolic level, Christ is the self. He is the embodiment of Logos, a man that subjects himself to the will of the Father without detachment from his humanity. The nature of Christ is dual. He is fully God and fully man. He is one with God, but he is also human through his purpose, which is to be the pathway to God for others. Through Christ, God embraces and elevates humanity. I think that viewing Christ through the lens of his death on the cross as a martyr should not be the main focus of worship. It is merely the testimony that she walked the talk and fulfilled the prophecies. It makes him legitimate as a Christian Messiah, but not necessarily a role model to follow. The crucifixion is also a symbol for ego transcendence. The five wounds relate to rejection of personal will (limbs), and acceptance of self-harm of others through defiance to God (heart). Crown of thorns symbolizes the double function of the mind: understanding and egotism.

Dr Nicole LePera is a psychologist informed in enlightenment. She has her own youtube channel linked above, as well as instagram community. I was introduced to her content by @DrewNows.

There is no such thing as no-thing. To ask "Why is there something rather than nothing" is similar to asking "Why is the Moon made of cheese rather can carrots?". Nothing is not a thing. Nothing cannot possibly be, that is what it "is". On the existential level, you can ask "why anything exists?" and the answer is God! How anything exists? The answer is: Love! What loves that something (everything)? The answer is Nothing! God is so selfless that it does not exist and it loves so hard that things do exist.

Aren't you having fun, @mandyjw? Nothing is not-a-thing. It isn't.

I was so guilty of this... I used to share these paradoxical quips (and still sometimes do) when I'm in a certain mental space of inner disconnection. I do that when I'm high on structural understanding, but very low on empathy. They are not deliberate attempts to "own the discussion", they point directly to the core of the problem with the intent to illuminate it. The problem with this "solution" is that it's irrelevant. It's like giving a person a ladder that has only the first and the last step and none in between. We're relative creatures, we don't work this way. It's all contextual and we first and foremost want to be felt, not understood. So, here's a quip for this discussion: Meet the relative as the relative. Boom, thread closed. (Just kidding).

"Better" and "worse" are relative to your agenda. "Final" awakening is when there is no agenda because there is no self. From the POV of enlightenment, there is nothing better and there is nothing worse.