FindingPeace

The question seems to be: why do you need others to recognise your worth? If you are confident in your own worth then you wouldn't need to defend it or prove it to anyone. Investigate your need for appreciation. Who are you trying to prove yourself to and why? It's very easy to feel uncomfortable when people perceieve you differently to how you know you are. Or they don't see qualities in you that you know you have. The ego likes to assert itself, demonstrate the qualities, prove to people that their perception of you is wrong. But what would happen if you just accepted that they don't see the 'real' you. How would you feel? What would feel lacking if you just allowed people to think whatever they liked? This feeling might point you towards the root of this issue. You want to 'punish' others for not seeing you for who you think you are. For not appreciating your worth? This is a loosing game. You can't control the perceptions of others. None of us can. We are all subject to other people's thoughts and opinions of us. But the skill is to become independent of that. Become independent of the thoughts and perceptions of others and become confindent that we know our own worth and that is all that really matters. You can't criticise or blame other, and definately can't punish them, for their own perceptions. They are not you. They don't think or experience the world the same way as you do. We are all different. You are expecting others to know what you know about yourself. To acknowledge what you see as value and worth. But the problem is that reality and people don't know or care what your expectations are. Your expectations are your own. You can't lash out at others for not fulfilling them. They don't have to any more than you have to fulfil their expectations and validate or acknowledge them. Maybe you need to sit and introspect on how it makes you feel when you don't get the recognition from others. Try to unpick the feelings and see where they are comming from, what they are trying to protect you from. Somewhere in there is a need to project your self-worth on to others to gain recognition. This need is about you and not about them. This is why you can't take it out on others. More often than not, when we feel provoked by other people it is highlighting something about ourselves. It's rarely ever about them.

This is something I have thought a lot about too. Like you I don't feel a huge urge to impact the world or other people that much. I do like to help others where I can, but at the larger scale, I'm just not that inclined right now. And it's ok, you don't have to care about the world at large or about other people particularly. It might sound selfish, but it's not like you are doing any harm to others by not 'contributing' to them. Maybe you are not ready for that yet. I can identify. This much the same conclusion that I have come to. I think it's best to get yourself on track, work on yourself before you can think about others. You need to work out who you are, what you want and where you are going. Get your psychology mastered. Absolutely. This is what I am doing. Then, in time, you will get a better pitcure of what path you want to follow. There is a lot of focus on 'impacting the world'. It sounds nice and noble. I suppose it is. But at the same time I see nothing fundamentally wrong with making life about you. Making it personal. Perhaps you'll decide you want to live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere just appreciating nature and reality for what it is, making no contribution to the world. That's ok. Or perhaps you'll decide to get out there and make big changes that help thousands of people. That's ok too. Either way is ok. It is easy to feel a sense of guilt that you aren't making some contribution. As far as I see it, if you aren't doing any harm to the world then you can do whatever you want, even if it serves no purpose to society at large. Don't feel that you have to have an impact. There are no rules here. No obligations. If you do it then it has to be because you want to, not because you think you have to. Otherwise you won't be being authentic and true to yourself. That won't fulfil you. Your life is about you at the end of the day. The same as it is for every living being. Shocking though this may sound to some people, you are not here for the benefit of others. (but you can benefit others if you have something to offer and choose to)

@Nomad I was in two minds whether to respond. Assuming this is true, which isn't unreasonable, there is an important thing to understand that is at the root of what I was trying to say. There are two ways of fulfilling those needs: by becomming dependent on external sources to do so, or by doing so internally. It is possible to self-validate and self-approve which is a far better mindset to come at life from and alleviates the dependence on external sources that are inherently unreliable and require constant maintainance. Let's not turn this thread in to an ego battle. I appreciate that you have a different viewpoint to me. I don't need to prove or explain myself or in any way try to convince you, or anyone, of my own opinion. My opinion comes from my own direct experience. I'm not concerned about convincing others that it is in any way a 'truth'. A couple of people posted on this thread with real world problems asking for advice. I responded with insight that I have gained from my own experience. It is up to others to use their own critical thinking to decide whether or not there is any use for that insight within the context of their own situations. You hold an oposing opinion to my insights. That's ok. Perhaps you are genuinely interested in my 'evidence'. Maybe. But 37 years of personal life experience is hard to articulate on a forum thread. And in any case, it is subjective to my own perception. It may not be true for other people. Forgive me for this attack but: perhaps you could reply more constructively to the original posts with advice from your own personally validated insight, instead of quoting references to external material that is not your own experience, and then using those references to invalidate someone else's personal and real-world experience. One of the things that Leo advocates and encourages in his videos is not taking external studies and 'scientific' sources as truth, and to actually do the work ourselves and prove to ourselves what does and doesn't work and what is an isnt possible. This is my approach to life.

I like this question. Maybe there are social conditioning factors, genetics, environmental, historical. Will have to think about this for a while.

It seems the more wrapped up in technology society gets, the more detached it becomes from nature and reality. I look out of my window at the beautiful countryside see people walking or jogging along the road with their earphones in and a phone in their hands checking out social networking... oblivious or even afraid of the outside world. Perhaps the future of our existance is one within a technological bubble. Much like the matrix. Heck, one day we won't need to get out of bed. Just shove on a headset and the virtual world awaits us.. Virtual world..nice idea, no need for personal development. We can just configure our preferences and update our software whenever it suits us..

I disagree with this. I can vouch from experience that needs can indeed be completely elimitated. Yes, sometimes there are things that may never truly go, but it is possible to learn how to either fulfil a need yourself without the external fix, or understand that what you think you need, you actually don't. This is what inner-work is about. It's really about identifying what are genuine needs (safety, sustainance, shelter for example) and what are not (hedonic pursuits, validation, approval, material aquisitions etc).

Not exactly. Simply being aware of these things does make some difference because it will change the way to look at things and also the thoughts and actions you take. But to make a need go away you have to actually do work on that area of your life. So if you identify that you have a low self-worth, for example, then just being aware of that might remind you why you are feeling a certain way about someone or something and perhaps you can take more objective action. But it won't fix the problem. In this example to fix the problem would require action in other areas of your life. To improve self-worth you would need to look at why you are lacking it - do you take other people's opinions, or behaviour towards you as a source of validation and if so then you would need to become independent of that source of validation. Learn to self-validate. Learn how to see value in yourself without the need for external validation or approval. But finding the root causes is the starting point. Then you can start working on ways to repair the issues. That's the next step. You can also learn to become more comfortable facing your insecurites by not accomodating them. It's much like facing fears. Runnning from them won't help so learning to face up to them is the only way to overcome them. Learn to take control over them and not let them control you. This is useful whilst you discover how to fix them, which could take some time.

A good way to get to the roots of things is to imagine not having them. Or if you don't already then even better. Write down what you are feeling, what seems to be missing. What you expect from that thing you are missing. I would also introspect on what you think 'love' is. What do you expect from it? What does it mean to you? What are you feeling when you don't have it. Usually it comes down to validation and perhaps gaining self worth. How do you feel about yourself as a person? Are you confident and self-sufficient or are you needy? The need for appreciation is in here somewhere to. A lot of it comes down to expectations you have and believe this external thing will give you. Except that in reality there is no guarantee that something will meet your expectations. Especially with relationships. This is the root cause of so many dysfunctional relationships. You may have a vision of how it will be and how it will serve you but the reality could be greatly different. Greatly dissapointing even. You need to shed the expectations and the need to have things a certain way. By having a 'need' you can only be dissapointed when that need isn't met. You spend your life pushing for the need to be met and when that need involves another person, controlling that person to provide that need. The answers are usually there right in front of you. Like I said above, when you don't have something you feel the 'need' to go after it. So the cause of the action is right there under your nose. You need to ask questions then question the answers until you dig right down to the bottom of it.

Yes and no. No it isn't 'planned' for us. Yes it is designated. This can be proven by looking at your history. It is what it is and was always going to be that way. There is no going back and changing it, it played out the way it has played out and got you to where you are right now reading this. And this will be the same for the future. It will be what it will be. There will be no way to 'change' it because anything you do to do so, you were always going to do anyway. So yes, your life will play out in a linear way from start to end. When you reach the end you can look back and see how it played out, in the knowledge that there was no alternative because you make all the choices you did, took the actions you took, and here you are. 'Choice' is an illusion. We are all working on a cause-and-effect principal. Even choices are not really choices, they are determined by many many variable that influence an outcome. There is only ever one outcome from a choice - the outcome that happens. The outcome that was only ever going to happen, because it did. But in any case, whether you choose to do something or not, it still stands that you were always going to choose (or not choose) a course of action. So if you decide to do nothing, then, well, you were always going to make that 'choice'. What is the point in being a better person? To improve the quality of your experience of reality whilst you are here experiencing it. But you don't have to do that. But since your experience of life is an illusion anyway you may aswell buy into that illusion with illusory choices! Nature didn't have a predetermined 'direction' for us. Everything in reality is just a chain-reaction of cause-and-effect. One thing leading to another. Self-destruction and greed are just the consequences of the events that led up to them. They are also human concepts. Stars are created then destroyed but we don't judge it as some faulty consequence of nature. Earthquakes happen and rearrange the surface of this planet and destroy life in the process. It is just an event occuring. There is no significance to it. Only we apply significance to events in nature and life. Everything just 'is' and we just 'are'. In fact even that isn't true. Because we are a part of everything so therefore it all just 'is'. And everything that occurs, the way reality plays out, including our lives that are a part of reality anyway, all of it just 'is' and 'does'.

I think motivation really comes down to how much you want something, how important it is for you and what your expectations are. Do you doubt the value of the books? Are you expecting instant results from them but find they don't meet that expectation? Are you looking to do self-development but want more direct and instant gratification? Reading takes time and you may not see the true value of the information until you complete the book. So it's easy to get bored and give up because you can't see the value in the content. Maybe they're not the best, well articulated, books. Maybe your expectations of self-development are unreasonable. Unfortunately it's a topic that takes time and persistence. It also takes a lot of work on your behalf. Reading a book won't give you the answers, it will only point you in the direction for your own self-discovery. Much like Leo's videos. Many people complain how long his videos are because they don't have the attention or motivation to sit down for an hour and listen to him talk. They want a quick fix. They want information and as quickly as possible. But in this subject that isn't possible. Self-development takes time and comitment to something that doesn't give instant results. Results can take weeks, months or years. And the source of that progress comes from you and not the books or videos. They are just a guide, not an answer to your problems. So if you want motivation to read the books, maybe the place to start is to look at your expectations of those books and what you are trying to achieve. In a way, this is a self-development hurdle in the outset - it's a sort or personal-development paradox. Needing to overcome problems in the first instance to embark on the development journey at all. This very problem you are facing is sign of what personal development is about and how hard it is.

I like this. Couldn't put it a better way.

Externals only cure the symptom and not the cause. All we do by creating external 'fixes' is create a comfortable environment that accomodates and appeases our inner weaknesses, insecurities, fears, whatever they are. It is those that really need fixing. Why? because if you only accomodate the inner issues by using external fixes then you have to live life maintaining these external fixes, forever. You spend your whole life effectively running and hiding from the root causes of the bahviours. You may think that this is ok as it makes you 'feel' better, but in the long term it doesn't. If video games fill a whole in your life then you will have to spend your life finding bigger and better video games to fill that hole, because ultimately you will either finish a game or get bored with it. You have to find ways to maintain that 'need'. And there is always the chance of losing that 'fix' even if for a day or two. Then what do you do? Feel empty again. External fixes are just that - short term fixes. Like drugs or alcohol, or sex. Feels good whilst the effects last, then feels empty once it wears off. This isn't fixing anything, just feeding in to the underlying cause. The real growth comes from identifying why you have these 'holes' or needs and find out how to fix them at source. Then you are no longer dependent on the externals and don't have to spend your life chasing and maintaing sources of the externals. Here's another way to look at it. For as long as you have these inner holes, needs, insecurities, then they will control you. You are not living an authentic life, you are being controlled by inner weaknesses. Fix the inner issues and you then control your life and can do so more objectively and fulfillingly. So how do you release the need for an external fix? Introspection to find out what is pushing you to need that fix. Get to the root of it. If you need videos games because you feel empty, then you need to discover why you feel empty. What is lacking? Maybe there isn't a hole at all but you feel that by not doing something that it is somehow representative of something 'missing'. Are you not comfortable with your own company or just doing 'nothing'. What other healthy activities could you pursue instead? I don't know. But this is where the work needs doing. You need to learn to become satisfied and at peace with yourself without the need for anything external. Easier said than done and not something I can tell you how to do. I have done this myself mainly by adopting the reframe of my mindset and reminding myself to accept that I don't need the external things. Comming to an acceptance.

@Mantas The fact that you have done some introspection, come here and talked about your situation, looking for answers and suggestions is a really positive step. You're lacking motivation and drive. Nothing excites you. It's an easy trap to get caught up in sitting around at home doing nothing. Been there done it. It's very easy and comfortable. What I find though is that once I make myself get up and do something, particularly if it gets me out of the house then it changes my mood. It can be motivating. Just going out for a walk makes a huge difference. I've been in and out of work for a while. I find that the longer I am out the more nervous I feel about getting back in to work. The more I feel that I can't face it. Yet, when something comes up and I push myself to take it, actually getting out and doing it changes the way I feel. I actually enjoy it, and it motivates me. I feel more active and driven and less inclined to lounge around. So sometimes you have to push yourself to take that step, but once you do you will feel very differently about it. It won't be so hard. And once you get out and feel more motivated you can start to see life more objectively and be in a better frame of mind to make choice about where to go from there and what to do. Fear of failure. It's true, if you do nothing you can't fail or be rejected. Until you lose your house and your friends... It's a slippery slope though because sitting around procrastinating and worrying about failure only deepens the fear. The longer you think about it the more you buy in to it. The less likely you are to do anything. Yes, you may be unsuccessful at a job, you may not handle it, you may get fired or you may not get on with people. Then again none of that may happen. In any case 'failure' or 'rejection' are just labels. I prefer to reframe them as 'experience'. It isn't failure, it's experience that you can draw upon in the future to be successful next time. What is rejection? Someone doesn't like you? So what? Not every likes everyone. But you don't even know that people won't like you. You are trying to second guess other people and situations. You're not a fortune teller. You can't see in to the future. It comes down to confidence. You have to accept and take on the 'failures' and 'rejections' and put them down to experience. Then use that experience to improve yourself. There is no shame in it. We all go through this in life. Doing what you are doing isn't going to give you any positive results in life. So you need to get out and take chances, gain experience with each one. Taking action is the only to work towards positive results and you will likely find that once you start taking action you will gain motivation and positive mood. At the very least, take some action that gets you out of the house, even if it's just going for a walk. You'll be surprised at the difference it makes to your mood and motivation. Like they always say: If it doesn't work out, try and try again. Learn from each experience. One other thing: This sounds much like 'demand resistance'. It's not unusual that when we have people pressuring us to do things that we feel resistant to their demans. Noone likes being told what to do. So remember that this isn't about them or what they want from you, it's about you and what you need to do for yourself. Never mind what others are nagging you about. You need to motivate yourself for your own purposes. Take action for you, not for them. Edit to add: In response to your post title 'What is wrong with me?', the answer is nothing is wrong with you. Stopping judging yourself would be another healthy step to take. So you're a little lost right now, it's fixable. You're not broken or wrong or faulty. You just need some direction and motivation, like the rest of us, lol. You can do it. And the fact that you have come to this forum looking for answers proves that.

It's good to see so many youngsters on here. By that I mean 18-25 or even just under 30. You guys are lucky to be getting in to personal development so early on. I wish I had found it 20 years ago - what a difference it would have made. But, it's never too late, or too early. I'm impressed that younger people are taking it so seriously. Maybe there is hope for society yet

@Costa You are right that people can't watch a few lame tv documentaries and pretend to know anything about the subject. Noone here is actually doing that. I think you misunderstand what I was saying. I am not making fun of science. Sure, it makes me laugh, because at times I can see the futility and neuroticism of it. My relationship with science goes way back. As a child I wanted to know how everything worked - including the universe. I have always questioned everything and I still do. Science was where I looked for answers, it seemed to make the most sense. Physics and maths were my best subjects at school and led me to study degree level electronic engineering. Yes, we touched upon quantum phsyics in that, but that's not really what this is about. I had an epiphany one day while sitting in a lecture about analogue filter circuits. As the lecturer described the mathematical models that could be used to design and predict the behaviour of a circuit I tried to sit there and imagine how the circuit actually worked. How, when you have hundreds of frequencies oscilating around in a wire, you can isolate an idividual one. Tried to visualise those electrons moving around, oscillating back and forth through inductors and capacitors. But it occured to me that not only could I not visualize how it physically worked, but it wasn't even explained to us because...well..here's the maths...that's all you need to know. Noone cares how it works, they just care the the maths explains that it does. Which to me is a massive blindspot. Sure we can design and build working technology based on these calculations but noone tries to understand the mechanics of what is really going on in those wires. To even ask the question is met with a look like you have two heads. So what I am getting at with the science thing, is that we base a lot of science on models and maths that only explain the behaviour of reality and not the real-world mechanisms at play. It seems to me that if we get a better handle on the mechanisms then perhaps we will get better understandings of the bigger picture. We're not really exploring the nature of the fabric of reality, we are only findng ways to describe the behaviour of it. It just seems like a huge blindspot that we ignore, because, well, we can't actually see it even if we wanted to. Your picture of the atom above is not a picture of an atom. It is an image representative of an atom, caused by what we think is an atom, but it isn't the atom itself. You even stated this: This is the point. Science isn't as empirical as we think it is, but more an approximation. Because, as yet, we haven't been able to directly experience the fabric of reality, and it's entirely possible that we never will. Models will have to suffice. The point of this forum is to exchange ideas. We're not here to be dogmatic. Sure, we don't all agree but that's the nature of it. It's no biggy. Don't give up on the forum, stick around, your input is valuable.

Now you've put me on the spot. Sometimes I'm not entirely sure what constitues a 'value' over other 'likes' and 'comforts'. Everything you mention above gives good food for thought when it comes to determining one's values. I googled the definition of 'value': principles or standards of behaviour; one's judgement of what is important in life. consider (someone or something) to be important or beneficial; have a high opinion of. I like watching a good movie but do I value it as fundamental to my life? Or what about the comfort of a warm cosy bed after a long tiring day? Or being at one with nature and reality somewhere peaceful and beautiful. I guess values can come in any form but for me there are the handful of core values that, in the absence of everything else, I choose to identify with and live by. So these would be the high consciousness, authentic and long-term values.

I know what you mean here. I find the same problems when interacting. What I do is to allow myself to notice my response, be it thoughts or emotions, but not judge the response. I then try to refocus my attention back on to the person and not on my reaction to them. It's not unlike meditating where you become aware of a thought-story but refocus your mind back on the present moment. It's when we start to react to someone internally that we get distracted by our reaction and then start to buy in to it, analysing it, judging it, trying to fight it or allowing it to pull us off into some story about the interraction and our relationship to it. At least that's how it is for me. So by noticing but keeping the focus externally rather than internally I avoid gettiing caught up in my own reaction. Hope that makes sense.

@Philip You're right, there is overlap. But also there is a small distinction between these values. Perhaps if I look really hard I will see that there are one or two core values that underpin all of the others. The exercise wasn't as straight forward as I thought it ought to have been. I think there is a difference between things that we 'like' verses things that are of true value to us. Sometimes the distinction isn't obvious at first. Good thread. Interesting to read people's responses.

Yes, I see this when meditating. Interestingly I often wonder whether other animals spend more time living with that 'peace of mind' that we find very hard to cultivate. They don't live 'in their own heads' like we do. They're living outwardly. You could call it ignorant bliss. But that's the point really - what is ignorance other than the absence of awareness of knowledge. They can't sit around worrying about life, questioning it. Unless they are in iminent danger or facing some other threat they are at peace. We spend too much time analysing and questioning our lives and our world. We're forever in our heads thinking, worrying, wondering, challenging life. We don't spend enough time living outwardly and just 'being'. The more knowledge, models and beliefs we have the more time we spend rearranging, modifying and reviewing it. We can't just sit down and 'be', without some useless thought-story taking over our focus and consciousness. We need thoughts, to a point. We have a remarkable piece of biological engineering in our skulls. But we need to refine the amount of data that we shove in there. Put it to better use and reduce the amount of wasted mental resource taken up by neuroses and other meanlingless pursuits. I don't know yet where the balance is. But there must be some truth to this. I can't speak for anyone else but when I meditate I can't maintian focus for more than 10 or 20 seconds at a time. When you become mindful of your thoughts throughout your day, you become aware of how short-lived your moments of concentration and focus are. How short the periods of true mindfulness are. Something seems off that we spend more time distracted by thoughts than actually focussed on the present moment. Perhaps this is how our brains are wired from evolution. Perhaps it's the conditioning and BS we fill them with througout our lives. To me it seems our species is becomming more trapped by it's own mind as time goes on and less in touch with reality. There must be a way to shrink the knowledge base and reverse this effect. Interesting topic.

@Electron I'm not saying that quantum physics doesn't work. Most of our science 'works' and becomes useful to us. All I am saying is that we think that our models and theories provide evidence of the truth of reality when really we cannot make that assumption at all. Our models are just models. They predict the outcomes of specific circumstances. What science is doing is finding ways to predict the cause-and-effect nature of existance but it isn't explaining existence itself. We can observe the causes and effects of perceived nature but we can't see the mechanisms that operate in between. We can only construct models that explain the behaviours of the mechanisms. So in this sense, we are not really learning about the fabric of reality. Just rearranging ideas and concepts until they provide a viable representation of it.

In no particular order, my top ten values: Peace of mind Truth Openmindedness Respect Individuality Beauty of nature and life Honesty Authenticity Solitude Responsibility

I think science is a useful tool, to a point. And yes, it works, and serves a purpose. The problem is that science now is trying to get in to the nitty-gritty of what reality is and how it works. I find it funny that as a species we are arogant enough to believe that we have the capacity to even understand reality. But it's even more funny when you consider that we can only analyse our own interpretation of it and not reality itself. So it's a futile pursuit. I used to be really into science but have begun to see the limitations of it and the fact that so much of it is only theory and models and not direct experience or truth. We can't see atoms and sub-atomic 'particles'. Or energy fields, or photons, or em radiation. Or strings or quarks. We can only theorise about and model these things. We don't even know what they are or even that they really exist. Afterall, they are only a part of the illusion of our interpretation of reality. I watched a few tv documentaries recently about quantum science. It makes me laugh. Scientists arguing over the theories and models that may or may not prove that something may or may not exist and how it might work. The thing that got me was this idea that light photons can be either a particle or a wave depending on the application and that light behaves differently when being observed than when it isn't. I can't help but see the nonsense to it. Perhaps light isn't a particle or a wave. Those are just human concepts. Models we created for our convenience. But those models no longer work in this context. Maybe light is something else that we can't even comprehend as yet. Maybe we don't even have the ability to comprehend it. Maybe what we are seeing is the limit of our own perception and interpretation of reality. But scientists don't seem to acknowledge this fact, they just press on in ignorance as those they can and will find the answers to everything. The fact that we perceive a three-dimensional reality may even be an illusion. There is talk that reality is more akin to a holographic projection from a flat surface. Maybe. Maybe not. It's probably stranger than we can even conceptualise with our limited neural net brains and our limited sensory inputs. I think there will come a point (if it hasn't come already) where we can't get the answers we seem so desperate to find. We are just a biological entity, a part of reality itself, trying to analyse reality itself from the confines of our biological being. There are limits to that. Limits we seem to be ignorant of. We only have a linear perception of reality because we have memory. If we had no memory then we could only exist in the present moment. Memory is illusion. It's a collection of experiences. A collation of present moments. Time itself is just an illusion really. It is the perception of change. If everything was static then would there be any time? You only perceive the passage of time because you have a point of reference to observe changes. Usually thoughts. The constant flow of thoughts produces the perception of time. Have you ever found when meditating that when you quieten your mind you lose awareness of the passage of time? If you had not thoughts at all then how would you perceive time? For us there are always changes occuring to give us a sense of time. Biological events within us - breathing, heart-beat, sensations, hunger, tiredness, aches and pains. Then there are external changes - sunlights, movement, a ticking clock, weather etc. All of these things give us a sense of the passage of time. They produce change. I think the other thing is that our brains can't process raw present-moment data. They have to collate all the layers of sensory input and create a context out of them. Create a story, a description. It occurs to me that it is only our conscious awareness that can perceive this description though and produce the sense of time.

To be honest with you this is something I am still trying to work out myself. You are right that we should all recognise the limitations of our beliefs, at the very least. There is no denying that our brains are packed with a huge web of abstract knowledge with only a small proportion of it being absolute, empirical truth. The problem is that much of this knowledge is responsible for our suffering and psychological unrest. Particularly where our own 'knowledge' conflicts with that of others or of reality. So it stands to reason that if we can shrink that knowledge base, shed particularly the most dysfunctional and problematic belief systems and take on more truths, then we can reduce our suffering and increase our peace of mind. Exactly to what extent we can or should do that I don't know yet. I like this example. I often sit and observe my own pet and wonder how they perceive the world and what they may or may not think or believe. I like to compare how they operate to how we do. It is true that they don't have the same knowledge base as they don't have the ability to concetualise the same things that we do. Therefore it would seem that they operate more from 'truth' than from belief. Perhaps they hold the key to how we need to shrink our knowledge base. Your cat sits next to her bowl when she's hungry. But is she holding a belief that you will bring food or is she operating from the truth that experience has taught her - that the bowl is where her food usually is and that if she sits next to it you will provide food for her. Is it a belief or a truth? After all, her experience has proven this to be a truth has it not? Noone came up to her one day and explained that if she sat by her bowl you would bring her food. She had to discover and learn this experientially. Until you stop providing food it will continue to be a truth for her. I guess you could still call this a belief. What starts off as an experience of truth becomes remembered as a belief. There is no guarantee that it will be truth the next time. So this puts in question what truth really is. Because fundamentally, nothing is certain or permanent. The only thing that we can be sure of as truth, is the present moment, and the experience of consciousness.

I hope that he doesn't delete his older videos, or if he does then at least includes the content in a newer improved video. Some of the earlier ones, including the 'Judgment' one contain cruicial concepts that are at the core of personal-development. In fact if you follow the videos in chronological order they actually take you on a personal-development journey. So I say keep them all! Or at least improve on them.

It occured to me that the reputation thingy is a bit of an ego game. Then again, forums themselves can be a whole can of egocetnric worms. Certainly other forums demostrate this. But I have noticed here a higher level of consciousness and less egotism than other forums, which is to be expected given the context. Where was I going with this.. yes, so the reputation thingy can serve a constructive purpose. It can provide a rough guide to people who are a more credible or accepted source of insight verses people who have little or no insight or experience. Not that sources of information should need evaluating - afterall, if we all use critical thinking then we can make our own minds up whether insight is valid or useful or not. But like every system it is open to abuse. Not only that but after a few years everyone will be a 'Master', lol. I actually find it usefull to see the number of 'thumbs up' a post has so that I can see that people find that particular post to have some accepted insight. The important thing is to use the system responsibly. Give reputation when you connect with some insight or find it helpful. It's a more usefull indicator of the validitiy of individual posts than perhaps for the author of the posts.