bmcnicho

They could talk about politics, although Leo might view Vaush as being too ideological. Vaush seems to be fairly knowledgeable about philosophy, but I haven’t seen an indication that he knows much about spirituality at all. He’s open minded and engages in good faith discussions, but he would probably lump Leo in with the new age community, which he views as a potential source of bad political outcomes by leaving the door open to irrationality So I don’t think either of them would be interested, nor would it go that well, although being a fan of them both it would be cool to see. Leo should definitely go on Joe Rogan though!

The way I think of it, the attributes of the Absolute arise from it being the groundless ground of all of existence. When asking why something is the way it is, if you come up with some cause, that cause will itself require an additional explanation. This creates a chain that can continue indefinitely. Hypothetically, the chain could be ended by some sort of universal finite limit that’s completely arbitrary and exists for no reason. But if you don’t believe that’s possible, then the alternative is that at the fundamental level everything is true at once. I believe the other properties of the Absolute are a natural consequence of this fundamental idea in various ways

@machiavelli I think Leo said awhile back that by the time we’re seeing a video it’s usually about an insight he had around 3 years prior. (Because it takes time to decide the best way of teaching things and there’s lots of topics to cover) So all along he hasn’t been sharing his latest and deepest thoughts I never saw Leo’s solipsism video either. I too wished I had been able to. It’s natural for curious people to want to know something that’s labeled as secret or forbidden. So I spent several hours contemplating solipsism, and since I’ve seen all his other metaphysical videos, I think I was able to figure out about what he would’ve said I understand why he took it down now. I consider myself to be very psychologically stable and open to radical ideas, yet when I put the pieces together it triggered a fear response that I haven’t had with other ideas. I’m fine now, it was a positive growth experience, just a very direct insight. It isn’t categorically different than Leo’s other ideas though, the pieces are all there. The contemplation twisted my head in knots, it’s counterintuitive, I needed to talk with someone to finish sorting it out. There’s probably other sources out there that talk about solipsism that can be helpful too I think it’s very sensible that the deepest insights should be safeguarded in some way. A paid course is a straightforward way of doing that, however maybe there could be a method for those who truly can’t afford it to demonstrate their psychological maturity and spiritual readiness somehow

I’ve heard it spoken of in both ways, and I’m wondering if both could be true despite sounding contradictory, or if one version is more correct Example: I am the only consciousness and all others are my imagination, so when I talk to others, I’m talking to myself Versus: You are the only consciousness and all others are your imagination, so when you talk to others, you’re talking to yourself If I were to tell someone they weren’t conscious, they could easily try to refute me by saying they were. I could of course respond by saying I’m just imagining them saying that, which perhaps is correct However, if I told someone that they were the only consciousness, it would perhaps be easier for them to understand the idea, but wouldn’t I be lying because I know myself to be conscious?

I know alcohol is normally considered anti-spiritual. Actual psychedelics are obviously a lot better, but sometimes on alcohol I feel a much greater sense of self honesty. Should I keep drinking for that reason? Or is it ultimately better to stop? Does anyone else feel this way?

@CuriousityIsKey It makes a lot of sense to me that consciousness is the fundamental reality and physical things are simply perceptions within it. Since we know that consciousness can exist at all, it’s also difficult to imagine what could limit it, and if there was a boundary of some sort it’s also difficult to imagine what metaphysical force would prevent things from coming to existence outside of that boundary That being said, since we are conscious, anything that we could observe would be observed within our experience. Theoretically though, it’s possible for something to exist outside of or even above consciousness, however it would be a reality far beyond what we’d be able to understand

I was contemplating a similar question during a mushroom trip a couple days ago. If consciousness is eternal and cannot be destroyed, only take on different forms, then why must conscious life fight and struggle to survive? One possible answer is that those who fight are too attached to their particular form, and are ignorant to the fact that consciousness will go on forever without them and nothing is truly lost in death Another possibility is that the Darwinian process and all the suffering it includes is somehow necessary to create forms complex enough to experience and understand the most profound states of consciousness. Although this only makes sense from the perspective of planetary life in the form we understand. In the absolute sense, I don’t see any reason why the ultimate mind couldn’t come into existence with no process leading up to it Those are my half-baked thoughts so far. Of course oftentimes in these inquiries eventually I’m led to the deeply unsatisfying tautology of “It is because it is”. Looking forward to reading other people’s thoughts on this

I took 5 grams of mushrooms at 10:30 in the morning. I had slept well the night before. It started off as a really good trip that I still remember well. I was awake for at least an hour. Last thing I remember was I was in kind of a manic state and wanted to see how jogging would feel. I wasn’t feeling tired at all, but my sitter said I immediately laid down and fell asleep I woke up about 3 hours later in kind of a dissociated fugue state. I had an experience I would describe as “coming into existence”. It felt timeless, I had no past and no motivations. I eventually remembered the year, month, day of the week, and the fact I had taken a drug. I came to know that I had a past, vaguely sensed what it was, but felt that it was unimportant. On the walk home my identity gradually came back to me, but I was saying things without feeling like it was me that was saying them This experience was valuable in its own way, but I feel like I would’ve had an ego death if I had stayed awake. Has anyone else fallen asleep like this? I thought on 5 grams you could still stay awake and remember it. I’m wondering if it was the high dose that caused me to fall asleep. Do you think I would stay awake if I took slightly less? My previous trip was 3.5 grams and was fairly mild for that dosage, which is why I wanted to try a full 5 for stronger effects.

@Khan 0 I’ve done 3 trips, 1 gram, 3.5 grams and 5 grams. They were dried all three times

@Thought Art Was it on a high dose that you passed out? Do you think lower doses are a way to avoid this?

@halfknots Ah ok, that makes sense. I didn’t know mushrooms were a sedative, because in my 3.5 gram trip I was manic for 5 hours. I appreciate my experience for what it was though, I just feel like I missed out on potentially the best part. I’ll try 4 grams next time to see if I can remember it better

@halfknots You think I wasn’t actually asleep? That’s possible, but there was a solid 3 hours that I have no memory of. I guess I remember having no ego and my ego coming back, but I don’t remember an experience of losing or transcending it

All the political stuff going on is nonsense. People seem like soulless grifters these days. The sheer level of incompetence and aggressive ignorance on so many topics is astounding. It’s like people are waging a war on truth and on goodness and on any kind of competence or direction The future? Doesn’t matter. Sure all our grandchildren will probably die and suffer horribly when they’re like 8 or 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 years old, but it’s not literally happening right now so who cares. Let’s find some nonsensical bullshit to pay attention to instead All this spirituality and meditation stuff is kind of nonsense too to be honest. I have followed Leo for many years and have found a lot of value in what he has to say, but ultimately using various techniques to destroy the mind’s ability to feel negative emotions isn’t some kind of “enlightenment” Truth is pain. The more pain one can bare, the more truth one can see. Happiness can always only come from ignorance and delusion. Maybe that’s why people are so delusional. Maybe there is only hedonism and all truth and meaning is a lie Anyways, I guess it’ll be fun to watch this nonsense called civilization finally crumble. It will be painful, but in the end it will all be over soon enough Edit: Merry Christmas, Motherfuckers!

We've only been dating a few weeks and she's already shared a lot of heavy personal stuff with me. She has pretty severe anxiety and depression, and she worries a lot that I'm gonna break up with her, even though I give her lots of positive attention and compliments. I found out that she self harmed today. She refuses to get help and is upset when I say she should. She's already very attached to me, and some of the things she says make me uncomfortable, but it makes her sad when I suggest that things are going too fast. She's also very energetic, and when we spend several hours together it gets pretty exhausting, but I can't really talk to her about that, because that's something she's insecure about. I really like her for other reasons, she's very creative, very kind, and I feel comfortable enough to be very authentic around her. It's just feels like way too much way too fast. It seems like I have to be very strong and stable in order to help her, but I have issues in my own life to deal with too. I know that if anything happened to her I'd blame myself. I feel responsible for her even though we just met. It's scary knowing that even being a little impatient with her or making a slightly negative comment could have a large effect on someone in that kind of mental state. It seems like a state of selflessness is required here that's way beyond my level of development. Any comments or advice would be greatly appreciated

If you’ve ever learned about the complex multi-step process of protein folding, it’s pretty incredible! Think about all the chemical reactions happening in trillions of cells all at once: cell division, muscle fibers twitching at the molecular level all in sync, hundreds of enzymes each specifically shaped, etc. It’s an unfathomable amount of intelligence and complexity! Add to that in humans the structure of the brain with billions of neurons connected by trillions of synapses. ...And then all this comes together to form a flat-Earther. And then a group of these people come together to create a Qanon conspiracy cesspool on 4chan. My mind is struggling to understand the seeming contradiction here, how we can be perfectly calibrated and structured at the cellular level, but fail in the most basic ways as individuals and as a society. Does anyone have ideas about this?

@Carl-Richard The point about the cost of information processing is one I forget to give enough weight. I think that the cost of lacking an accurate perception of reality would be greater, especially in the case of large societal issues such as climate change. Maybe that will end up being the case, but our evolutionary mechanisms are primarily geared toward things with personal stakes and short time horizons. Maybe if I had all the information it would make sense to me why humans need to have the shortcomings we do, it just seems like a huge waste of potential

I’ve been moving toward Stage Yellow for a few years now and I feel like I have a pretty solid grasp on systems thinking. I do still have psychological hang-ups from previous stages, but for the most part I’m able to evaluate things on a multi-perspectival level. Periodically though, I’ll have a new insight on a topic and it’ll make me wonder if before I wasn’t truly at Stage Yellow yet. I feel like of all the stages, Yellow has the murkiest definition. I sometimes have trouble distinguishing Yellow from intellectual Orange. Fundamentally the difference lies not in the intelligence level of the material but in the underlying thought processes behind it It’s also easy to overlook some of the more radical implications of a full stage Yellow worldview, for example that democracy and authoritarianism are simply different governmental structures that represent different survival strategies on the part of the nations involved. With some more nuance added, I think this would be an accurate description, but still a difficult statement to make at a time where democracy is under threat throughout much of the world. So I guess I’m still trying to grasp where the threshold is where a set of ideas qualify as Stage Yellow rather than a more traditional intellectual analysis. I’m also questioning if under Stage Yellow it’s possible to take on strong personal positions or if one would tend to have mixed views on basically every topic to maintain an intellectual objectivity

I’ve noticed a pattern in recent years that as certain aspects of Stage Green have been rising in prominence, Stage Orange has been quick to try to co-opt it for its own purposes. The most consequential example is when corporatist politicians use progressive rhetoric to gain votes with no intention of delivering. More blatant is when ads for low consciousness products do this. I’d think it would be obvious to people how disingenuous this is, but it must work because they keep doing it. It’s disappointing to see how easily Stage Green language and aesthetics can be made non-threatening to the Stage Orange establishment by being used by people who share none of its fundamental values. Like the image of progressivism can be turned into just another product to be marketed. I’m also disappointed by how ineffective most activism and protest has been, with the fight for gay marriage being the prominent exception. But for the last 20 years, almost no progress has been made on the climate crisis, despite how important and urgent it is. I believe most members of these movements are sincere, but I can’t help but think that the people leading them kind of know that it’s an empty virtue signal. The term “controlled opposition” sounds like a conspiracy theory, but sometimes it seems like an apt descriptor I’m considering if this is just part of the process of evolution and if this sort of thing has happened with previous stages. An example could be the mostly Stage Red Roman Empire adopting Stage Blue Christianity as its official religion. Maybe something similar happened with Christianity pretending to tolerate Stage Orange European Enlightenment values In conclusion, I’m wondering if to achieve true Stage Green, there needs to be a complete collapse of the current system and if so would it be something that humans could survive?

I’m disappointed that this thread turned into a silly racial debate. My original post was about a specific obstacle to the development of Stage Green, I never mentioned race @Leo Gura Thanks for pushing back on my pessimism a bit. My concern is the insidious nature of it, that fake green could become an obstacle to true green. That the energy behind these movements could become sanitized to the point that it limits the pathways forward. But I suppose this is all part of the process

I've been thinking about how a single human is made out of a colony of trillions of cells with specialized roles that act together to form a single organism. There are many advantages to this, as they form highly adapted organ systems allowing each individual cell to benefit from the collective structure and intelligence of the whole. However, this comes at the cost of the cells giving up their ability to survive independently. If it turns out that the multicellular organism isn't well adapted and is likely to die, its individual cells aren't able to leave the organism and must die with it. It's also true that individual bacteria and other single celled organisms can survive just as well on their own with more limited interactions with surrounding cells. Based on biomass distribution, it's not obvious whether the single celled or multicellular survival strategy is best from the perspective of an individual cell. Relating this to humans, being able to socially cooperate with other people has given us a considerable advantage over other mammal species. Our forms of social organization have become more complex with time, and the culture we're brought up in has come to have a large impact on the people we become. I see this process continuing, especially with rapidly increasing technology. As of now, individual humans are still able to operate with some degree of autonomy, but in the future it will most likely be possible to directly link minds together using technology. My intuition regarding this is that the risks could easily outweigh the potential benefits. Whoever initially controls this technology will have immense power, and I fear the possibility of humanity becoming a hive-mind, where one ideology is forced on everyone with no possible recourse. Even if such a nightmare scenario doesn't occur, there's still the problem of how this collective system would be organized. There would need to be some sense of coherence to it, so that it wouldn't become an incomprehensible noise of everyone's contradictory thoughts and feelings. But it would also need to preserve unique perspectives and allow for creativity and change. Such an endeavor seems like it could so easily become a disaster, so the main thing I'm wondering is if a collective mind is inevitable given our current trajectory? Even today it seems like the common person isn't highly valued and doesn't have a meaningful ability to affect their circumstances. Ideology and culture already seems to induct people uncritically into it. So it seems to me like we're heading for a totalitarian future. Is there anything that can be done about it at this point?

Clearly survival pressures influence our worldviews greatly, but I'm contemplating whether there could be any truth value to beliefs independent of the evolutionary and psychological factors that produce them. Is treating people with compassion morally right in some higher sense, or did it merely benefit our ancestors survival to be able to cooperate in groups? Are virtues like competence, resilience, rationality, strength, creativity and love actually valuable or do they only happen to be useful for a group of apes living on a rock in space? This line of thinking is leading me towards a caricature of postmodernism, where every perspective could be equally correct, so it's sort of impossible to really reach conclusions about anything. I guess the more spiritual answer would be that Truth lies beyond thoughts and the mind, but I'm not ready to give up on the potential value of more relative truths. Playing a game of trying to deceptively 1-up the other meat blobs around me doesn't seem all that compelling to me. But if all our religions and philosophies are a bunch of nonsense our ego-minds invented then I don't see what else is there. The side of me that's an idealist tends to conflict with the side that's a rationalist, but that's what I've come up with so far.

I’ve been thinking about what the world’s continuing development up the spiral might look like in the next 200 years. Stage Orange seems feasible almost anywhere as much of the developing world is starting to industrialize and I expect stage blue religions to continue to decline. Certainly pockets of purple, red and blue will continue to exist for a long time, but I expect that blue will eventually reduce to around the influence that purple has today. Majority Green also seems possible, but more ambitious. I expect some of the issues with capitalism and technology to become more obvious in the coming decades, which should push people in this direction. Also, if affluence and security continues to increase, then more of the world will resemble the life conditions in Europe which facilitate Stage Green. However, attaining Stage Green requires a substantial increase in compassion, which I see as a major challenge for much of the population even with improving life conditions. The stage I’m more skeptical of is yellow, because it seems to require an understanding of abstract concepts that would be very difficult for the average person. Considering a Green/Yellow society that would be the precursor to a full Yellow society, certainly life conditions would have improved dramatically. The education system would have improved dramatically as well, promoting abstract reasoning, critical thinking, and deep conceptual understanding. Even so, most people don’t seem intrinsically drawn to intellectual topics. I could see about 30% of the population being stage yellow, about the same percentage that currently go to college in the US, but after that it seems like stage yellow requires a certain level of intelligence that would limit most people. For those who have studied spiral dynamics, do you think majority Stage Yellow is possible without some kind of mass scale cognitive enhancement?

What is Truth? Truth can’t be spoken, it can only be experienced. And this experience takes place in the mind and manifests in reality. The world is truth.

To clarify my point, it seems to me that true Yellow contains certain components that would be very difficult for someone of below average intelligence. They’d need at least a foundational understanding of history and psychology, and be able to see the paradoxical relations within complex systems. Perhaps there’s a less intellectual version of yellow that’s more intuitively based, but otherwise it’s seems that cognitive enhancement or genetic engineering would be required to create a stage yellow society. I guess what I’m getting at is who is currently stage yellow who isn’t also a fairly advanced intellectual?

Women are adults with equal rights and abilities, so why are men, at least to a certain extent, still expected to provide for them? Why would men do this? What do men get in return? Men aren’t the parents of the women they date, so it just seems really stupid and unnatural. Sure women provide men with emotional support, companionship, affection, and various other things depending on the individual, but men provide all those things to women too. Of course there are lots of women with successful careers who don’t expect this, but in general men are largely judged based on what kind of job they have, whereas women, with the exception of shallow men who care mostly about appearance, are evaluated more so for their personal qualities, which I think is a much more reasonable standard. This phenomenon could be explained in terms of evolutionary biology or as an after-effect of traditional gender roles, but isn’t it contrary to the values of modern liberal democracy? Doesn’t that standard suggest that women are inherently more valuable, while men have to give the products of their labor to women in exchange for their attention?