Pharion

It's actually really heartening to see everyone. Makes it feel like more of a real community, though we all live separate lives.

Thank you. Appreciate your wisdom. My mind's like an elephant who was whipped as a child if it tried to break its chain to escape. Now, it's grown older, wiser, and maybe grown strong enough to break the chain if it tried with all its strength, but learned helplessness dictates that pulling hard leads to suffering, so the mind sabotages the attempt to become free.

@Leo Gura That's surprising. I would think that life circumstances are much more important. What's your basis for the role of genetics influencing level of consciousness? Within the human population, of course.

@Moksha Agreed. What he fears the intense suffering which pain can cause. Suffering only exists in relation to past and future. If you're living completely in the moment, suffering is gone. One who's whole being is in the present moment with no thought for the past moment or the next moment to come, they still feel pain, but not suffering from it. It's just a sensation in the body. And even without physical pain, one who's mind is focused on the past and future will experience suffering. They will suffer from anticipating future pain, and remembering past pain. OP, if you can live fully in the present, there's nothing for you to fear.

I've recently done a lot self-observation. I've made proggress, and I'm now at a point where I have the wisdom, tools, knowledge, experience, capacity to grow in lasting ways in regards to my health, inner world / spirituality, life purpose, and just generally how I operate in life. I've also learned through expierence that egoic pleasure seeking / pain avoidance activities always backfire and never work in the long term. That said... as I take steps to create positive changes, there's a self-destructive / ego preserving tendency that arises. I could try to describe it as fatalism, nihlism, a negative self-image or feeling that I don't deserve health or success in my highest goals, but it's really just a feeling, or inner proccess that I'm aware of. It seems to be a resistance to self-actualization. It's like my mind's ideal state is to be making a little bit of proggress, but not too much. Maybe there's a fear that the real thing won't be what I imagined, or that I'll get depressed once I succeed, or maybe it's just a resistance to self limitation, knowing what I'll have to sacrifice and give up to get there - even though I think I want to make those sacrifices. I'm just wondering if anyone can relate to this resistance or inner sensation that keeps them from life-changing growth. I guess the ego just resists change by nature, and a significant identity change is threatening to it, but I've built my ego up as an identity that sincerely wants to grow and change for the better. The current next step I'm planning is a psychedelic trip and focus on just investigating and asking myself: "What do I truly want?" And really make that clear in all levels of my mind and contemplate that, and hopefully find where exactly the resistance is. I'm open to any advice or thoughts on this.

For me, it's all about authenticity. I'm lucky to live with a partner who I can be very authentic with and have a handful of friends with whom I can have the kinds of deeper interactions and conversations or just pure kinds of fun (I enjoy games a lot) that fulfill me. I don't have a lot of friends, and I do spend more time alone than most 22 yr olds. I do get lonely. Last night I was actually on the bus sitting alone as usual and a group of university students sat near me. What struck me about them was that despite the smiles, banter, and appearance of socializing and fun, when I paid attention to their body language, it was all posturing. There was hardly any authenticity: just a kind of competition to make oneself appear cool, sexy, interesting, etc. It didn't look comfortable, or natural to me. I tell that story just to illustrate my answer. Loneliness sucks, and connecting and socializing with others has a lot of benefits and makes life better. However, authenticity comes first, so build the kind of relationships where you can be fully authentic. It takes time, but you can do that. It has to do with how you select friends and what activities or topics you bring up with them. If it isn't working with someone, be willing to let go of that connection.

@Wyeth Thank you. "Childhood best friends Blay and Khorial will do anything to save their dying world. But when Blay discovers that Khorial has been tampering with blood-magic, they fight to Khorial’s death. Khorial is brought back by the Red Star, an entity who could give him the power to change the world. Now, Blay and Khorial lead armies against each other, but their fates hang on the strings of ancient enemies engaged in a struggle for survival." From a spiritual perspective, the Red Star is a being of pure ego who wants to gain control and eliminate threats to itself. Many characters succumb to its offers of power, but the story is ultimately about how they overcome it. It's called "The Starslayer's Chronicle." In regards to making a living, I'm opting for a very different approach. Personally, I don't think there needs to be a compromise between good, spiritually truthful storytelling and market appeal; though I also respect and understand your desire to be concerned with market appeal in your writing. I would ultimately like to make a living from it, but it will probably take many years of dedicated work before the returns come. While most aspiring authors fail to make a living, I don't believe it's an unwise endeavour. It's not a lottery. Rather, you get out what you put in. If you stay committed and keep improving and putting in the work, success is inevitable. In the meantime, though, my approach is to live within my means and work part-time as needed to support myself. I am interested in the "one-man business" model: creating valuable content, building an audience, then funnelling that audience to your work. It seems that increasingly, self-promo and having an online following is one of the best launch pads for new authors to begin getting eyeballs on their work and the first sales which get the ball rolling. I'm curious about what kind of research you did or what makes you confident that you can build an audience that way. Is it really as simple as just making high-quality content and putting it out for free? "Build it and they will come"? If you have any advice or resources, I'd love to hear them. I have no presence on youtube, TikTok, Twitter, or anything.

Hey Wyeth. Thanks for sharing your plans with us. I can tell you are skilled at writing by how easy and enjoyable it was to read your post. I haven't been active on this forum for months, but on intuition, I decided to check it, clicked your post, and was struck by how many similarities I noticed between us! I'm 22, a writing major in uni, and very interested in becoming financially independent and living off of my own work as a creator. Another thing that I related to about your story was being highly creative since childhood. I'd work on comics, drawings, and since high school, I've been creating and running dungeons and dragons-style RPGs for my group of friends. The Life Purpose I'm currently set on is to be a novelist. I view storytelling as a sacred and essential way of opening people's hearts and minds, and I believe that deep spiritual truth is the in the DNA of good stories. Plus, I just fucking love creating stories! I'm currently in the last stages of writing my first novel, with more planned after that. It's honestly hard right now to imagine making a living from it. I guess your confidence comes from the fact that you've already had some success on youtube. The most I can do right now is trust the process, but it helps a lot to have some positivity and others who believe in you. I love having other creators in my circle to collaborate with and share ideas. If you feel the same way, let me know. Either way, best of luck with your LP! I hope to see your work in the future.

That's a good, and tricky question. It depends on what exactly you mean by detachment I think. Ideally I want to have a life and self that I've worked hard to make better. People and things I care about, etc. But at the same time I don't want to be attached in such a way that I'm afraid of losing those things or will be crushed when they inevitably all fall away. So in summary, caring deeply about things is good, and putting lots of work into things you value to make them better is good (self, career, relationships). Detachment to me means having a healthy perspective about it. Knowing, and accepting that everything you cherish will end. It will make you more grateful for what you have, and less fearful, but not dispassionate or uncaring. That's the kind of detachment you want to aim for in life I think.

@SQAAD I’ve had a similar experience as you watching videos when I was younger and contemplating painful death and torture. I’ve also suffered with chronic pain for a long time so it’s been a theme in my life. The most productive answer I have struck upon is that the degree of suffering and fear of suffering is a sign, or result of your level conciousness. To clarify, why is dismemberment, torture, burning so terrifying? Well, it’s painful, sure. I could be wrong here but think that deep down pain itself, in fact all sensation is neutral. Depending on your level of conciousness, sensation is just sensation and it doesn’t have to be negative or positive. The reason things are painful is because they are destroying us and hurting our surivival. Burning to death is so painful because your body is literally withering away and your ability to survive is decreasing with every moment. This is my explanation for why these martyr figures can do what they do. They are so conscious that they are able to let go of survival, the body and life itself and allow the experience in without judging it as negative or fearful. So, this is my explanation for why god allows these things. Of course god loves everything and reality includes everything. Reality would not be full and complete without these things being part of the spectrum. But we are not doomed to suffer horribly if kidnapped by Mexican cartel, as long as we are able to detach and come closer to god conciousness, the experiences that caused suffering and terror before are transformed into just raw experience with no label good or bad.

Confident charming asshole= High value guy. Weak kind caring person= Low value guy. Hot bitchy dumb girl= High value girl. Ugly smart caring girl= Low value girl. I disagree with this dichotomy. It's true in particular contexts, but the opposite is true in other contexts. In shallow social situations like parties, highschool classes, night clubs, you're dichotomy is fairly true. If you are assessing long term relationship partners, and value intimacy and a good connection and relationship, everything is flipped. Sure, attractiveness and charisma still help, but those are secondary to personality features like being caring, trustworthy, having integrity as you said. Also, in real life those shallow things often don't matter much in regards to finding a good partner for a relationship. My girl finds me really charismatic and charming not because I objectively am, although I am (haha), but because she loves me and "gets" my humour and personality. I find her the most beautiful girl not because she's a literal model but because I love everything about her and that's just how my mind perceives her now. If you have chemistry and a deep connection with someone, usually your mind works out the shallow stuff anyway. Anyway, I don't say any of this to disregard your point. The message you're aiming at is definitely true, its just important to recognize that it's not universal, or equally important in different contexts or for someone with different goals...

This. I think that's a really good goal to orient yourself around. I'm 19, and I think aiming to nail all of that stuff down by age 30 seems like a solid idea. It would be less overwhelming to not feel like you should be gunning for maximum spiritual growth right away, and instead focus on building your lifestyle, career, relationships and such first. However part of me also thinks this seems like a trap. Lot's of teachers I respect warn about making excuses to pursue worldly things and delay the growth and letting go that really matters. Leo even has talked about the idea that your ego wants to "run out the clock" and use distractions to stop itself from being dissolved. On the other hand, there is the idea of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs which I think you alluded to in your post, as well the idea of Dharma which suggests that we have a duty to carry out our unique gifts and perspectives in the world, which would fit with your idea of delaying the heavy enlightenment work until later in life. Anyway, I don't have the answers to this, but I'm curious what you other guys who are young think about this. Is it responsible to work on your material life, skills and such for a while first, or is that just a distraction and excuse so that your ego can stay in the driver's seat for longer. Perhaps it is even better to start pursuing awakening earlier in life before you have so many attachments that will be painful to let go of? Let's discuss.

I am a young man but I have been Vegan most of my life. My father has been Vegan for much longer, and my girlfriend became vegan a couple years ago. I can say that I am not aware of any deficiencies in any of us. Although I don't have the healthiest lifestyle overall, My dad does and he is the healthiest person I know. Always has good energy, very rarely gets sick, or has problems with digestion, sleeping, or anything else health related. I feel like I am about as healthy and energetic as the average person my age, and so is my girlfriend. Only thing I supplement is B12 occasionaly. So, to answer the original post I would say definitely no. Or at least, if they do, its not perceptible. Like with any diet, it comes down to research and common sense. Eat a wide variety of foods, eat a lot of whole foods and "super" foods (Eg. hemp hearts, berries, nuts, leafy vegetables) and you should be good on any diet in my opinion.

I can relate to your experience. I think for men especially there is a lot of subconscious conditioning that makes attraction to other men confusing and shameful, or repressed even if you yourself are open minded. I think part of the reason why sexuality so misunderstood and understanding of it is so immature is that we don't want to shake the foundations of social dynamics between men and women, men and men, women and women etc. We are afraid to express love and attraction freely because of the ramifications. Also, I would advise you to be honest with potential partners. It probably won't matter in the relationship unless you are not going to be committed, but starting an interaction with a potential intimate partner with fear of rejection or a need to hide something the wrong approach. Would you want to be with someone who would not accept you?