Identity

Is engineering truly what your heart wants to do? What I hear is not someone who is following his life purpose, but someone who is trying to justify an unconscious decision made in the past. What do you really want to do?

@Leo Gura Hee Leo, You are obviously a very complex and nuanced thinker. And I would assume you think a lot. Just to be able to present these long detailed video's it must take a huge amount of mental energy to produce. Then adding in all the thinking you do behind the scenes, I can't imagine. My question is, how do you keep your mind in a healthy balance? Are there certain techniques, methods, approaches you use to make sure you balance thinking and feeling? To keep the mind in check, not burning it out, making sure your mind can also stay calm? I am personally struggling with this quite a bit. My work includes a lot of thinking and then watching actualized video's, contemplating, reading, figuring out life, etc. makes my mind gets overloaded. Symptoms can be: - Feeling my mind "burn" - Not being able to switch off or relax - Difficulty connecting to the body and feeling I do meditate regularly for an average of 30 minutes a day, but this does not seem to be enough. Do you have any advice you could share?

@zazed Because in general, I am operating from the level of ego-development where I am a separate human-being on the hero's journey. At times this construct can resolve to various degrees. But for now, there is the belief that I need myself to build up my life. When in this state of mind there is a strong sense of personal identity, control and future. After some self-reflection, this was the best story that came up.

I am willing to do it. No matter the obstacles that I will have to face, I am willing to do it. Looking back at the last years of self-actualizing, it hasn’t been easy, but I am willing to keep pushing forwards. I can see what I am creating. I can sense that I am on the right path. Even though times will get dark and bright, I will keep moving forwards. I can feel in my heart that I am laying the foundation for something beautiful. I see the glimpses of what my life will become. Every now and again, I look at the sky and my soul is filled with beauty that brings tears in my eyes. I know god is calling me and cheering me on, even though I am rarely connected to it as I go through my day. I am proud of how far I have come. And although there are few people cheering me on to continue the journey, I am on my own team. I know there is great potential in me and I will keep chipping away steadily to realize it. I love you all, thank you for being on this journey.

@JosephKnecht I am at times. And then I quickly get back to distracting myself and denying what I saw.

@Moksha ??

Hmm interesting. Let’s say confidence = success in business. One claims: experience —> confidence —> success the other claims: confidence —> success Maybe both are true, but one has the belief that there needs to be experience in order to be confident, which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy? Nice talk, but in my direct experience I also see that the more I have done in a field, the more confident I get and the more successful.

I love J. Cole! I’ve tried to psychoanalyse him before ? My guess would be that his normal cognitive survival mechanisms are between orange and green. Than maybe in some moments of rest and detachment he reaches into yellow. It’s the same for me. Making a living, social interactions, entertainment, and all of these big survival fields are hard to crank up to stage yellow. It’s relatively easy to think from that perspective at night making posts on the Actualized forum ?

Amazing podcast. Randall Carlson incorporates huge amounts of research from various scientific disciplines to see a big-picture of the history of the earth and civilization that will make your jaw drop. He displays a great example of stage yellow thinking in this episode. from just before the 2 hour mark, he has a nice 2 minute rand for anyone looking to move from stage green to stage yellow. Enjoy! ?

@herghly That’s basically what I’m doing atm. I helped to develop a training called ‘transformational leadership’ where we used spiral dynamics to help leaders to transition from orange to green. The business for that is growing. Another big challenge is the younger generations growing up with a stage green mindset not finding their place in an overwelmingly stage orange workplace.

You know how in math both sides of the '=' sign have to be equal and can be resolved to 0? I had this insight like that is what is happening with reality. There is nothing. But then on both sides of the "=" you can make up numbers. Therefore at first glance, it appears like there is a lot, but in actuality, there is nothing. For example; 0 0=0 (add 15 on each side) 15 = 15 (multiply by 3 each side) 15 x 3 = 15 x 3 (divide by 7) (15 x 3)/7 = (15 x 3)/7 Look at all this form that is created! Oh, it is actually still nothingness?

Some conversations I have had with my girlfriend sparked this interest of hearing different perspectives on the topic of desire and commitment within intimate relationships. The perspective of me and my girlfriend are quite far apart. I would love to hear how other people view this topic. My perspective: I shared with my girlfriend that I have desires for other girls then her at times. In the form of: - Getting aroused by hot girls walking down the street - Daydreaming about sex with other girls - Watching porn from time to time From my perspective, this is normal for a young guy being in a relationship. For me commitment is the choice of what I do with those thoughts and desires, thus not acting on them. So, as long as I honour our agreement to be monogamous, all is good. I don't want to suppress any of these desires, but just deal with them deliberately. My understanding of her perspective: For her basically any form of desire outside my desire for her is hurtful. She also claims (I say claims because I am sceptical) that she has no desires outside of me of any kind. I explicitly asked for different desires, and she denied to have any of these: - Feeling aroused when a hot guy looks at her with sexual intention - Wanting to watch porn - Daydreaming about intimacy with other guys To her the ideal relationship is one where you basically only see each other. No thoughts, emotions, desires for other people of any kind. Anything that falls outside of that mould she regards as hurtful, not the maximum amount of love you could have for each other. Questions: - To guys in relationships; do you also have desires for other women? If yes, to what degree? Has this evolved during the course of your relationship? - To girls in relationships; do you ever have desires for different men? If yes, what form do they take? - As a guy, I want to be honest, yet not hurtful. My approach so far has been to try to answer questions honestly (not easy), but not share much otherwise. However, I am not sure what approach to really take. I could play into her desires and fantasies vs. be honest to different degrees... - Are the perspectives and desires of men and woman just inherently different on this topic? Just because we are both devils, or do these perspectives remain add odds at higher states of consciousness?

Thank you all for your replies, I really appreciate it. It was nice to hear some other perspectives on this. Over the past few days my girlfriend and I have talked quite a bit about it. Now that we both understand eachother’s perspectives better, a lot of the differences have been resolved automatically. We’re gonna talk more to find a good way to move forwards. @bejapuskas Would you be so kind to close the thread my friend? ???

@flume Thanks for your response! Interesting to hear your perspective on this and how it changed. It must be quite hard being at the other side of this, and I see how one would indeed need high self-esteem and stuff to be able to deal with it. For me it is easy, as she has no desires (maybe some sneaky ones you mention ??‍♂️). But if she would also have these types of desires, I would probably also be scared and hurt. ??

@Preety_India So.. I am not talking about actually acting on thoughts and desires. That in my mind does indeed cross the line of our monogamous Relationship. How does this question apply to you?; - To girls in relationships; do you ever have desires for different men? If yes, what form do they take?

@wwhy Hahaha, funny, I must have spend 10 minutes giving her different scenarios. So... you have no attraction in this situation whatsoever?! You never have this type of thought?! No feelings in your body arise.. at all?! She was pretty adamant. But yeah, she does say she can ‘objectively’ say that a man is good looking. But she does not make the step to saying that she is attracted in any way. I guess we are both doing some mental gymnastics, making distinctions in certain ways, that help us justify our view.

@Meta-Man Cool thanks for your reply. Your perspective basically overlaps 95% with my perspective on this issue. Now I’m gonna defend my position even harder. Just kidding ?

Don’t let yourself get pushed around by any ‘have to’s’ There is no specific hard requirements, well maybe one hard requirement LOL It’s relative to a lot of different factors

@Shmurda Nope, not drinking any at all

I’m doing a lot of mental work. Over the past year I’ve helped 200 or so people create a vision for themselves. I’m thinking a lot about the future and creating my own business. I teach at a university. I develop content for a training company for leadership trainings. And besides all that, I’m following Leo’s content, not exactly easy on the mind either. As well as having all sorts of contemplative thoughts about the my life and the nature of reality in between. Summed up; my mind is a busy place. Quite often I can feel my third eye ? ‘burning’. Like it’s glowing. When I push even more, I can feel a sense of dizziness, is how I would describe it I guess. My question is; how can I deal with this better? My survival and desires are strongly centered around all these mind-based activities, and I have trouble cutting things out. Are there any ways I can still do all these things without these side-effects? Or is it a simple case of slow the fuck down? Love to hear your thoughts ?

Thanks ? Hmm yeah, sometimes I do mix and match different things at the same time. Setting some more clear boundaries of what I am working on may be helpful. Sometimes its quite clear that taking a break would be a smart move, but yet I’m in a flow, so want to keep going ? Yesterday for example, I was working on a project that required a lot of visualisation and different factors. I was working on it for less than an hour, but really got into a flow-state. Typing multiple pages and making drawings, insights left and right. The sensation of burning came up pretty early, but I kept going. Then at some point my eye started twitching a bit, still kept going. Until at some point I decided to close my laptop. Then I just sat there in a sort of metaphysical dizziness. As if time was flashing, insights flashing by, different states, whilst also a mix of satisfying emptiness at times. Hard to explain, almost psychedelic like. It took half an hour before I got back my footing.

That looks amazing!

Awesome, thanks for sharing! ?

?❤️

I think there is nothing wrong with taking your time and building up slowly. Better than following my footsteps and going in too hard first try ? Fears and concerns tend to get enhanced and warped during trips. In a tiny dose this won’t do much, but on higher doses it could become an obstacle. The jumping out of windows thing is definitely mostly a myth, especially on these low doses. See if, by reading more about it and letting go of negative stories, you can come to a place of calm acceptance and curiousity before your trip. Having a tripsitter is also recommended, both for reducing the fears and the actual safety.