Joshe

@Hojo I stand corrected!

I agree with you on the current circumstances, obviously, but I disagree that nature is more determinant than nurture with regard to drive for a thing. If you took 1000 female children and raised them in isolation where awakening was the ultimate goal - told them from birth this is what matters and built cultural reinforcements around it - you could easily program them to have the requisite drive. You're saying truth-seeking suits the masculine better, but how do you know how much of that drive is nature vs nurture? Of course it's both, but my 1000 girls thought experiment shows the power of nurture. It would even be possible to flip the script completely given specific circumstances. So, it seems to me you're not speaking on what is inherently true, just what is true right now.

Of course, but if you take 1000 women and 1000 men and put them in equal environments with all things being equal, any they all share the same goal - to awaken - is there any reason to believe more men would awaken than women if they had equal drive for it? I doubt it. It might even be 60/40 women on top. And spare me the "If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle" 😂 The thread title is "Do men and women awaken equally ?" Given the current circumstances, no, way more men do. But level the playing field, and my money is on the women.

I feel you. I've done a good bit of visual design work and it's a pain in the ass trying to explain decisions to clueless people. I can't stand when they're like "change it to blue" when it should be neutral. One thing I could never understand is why most B2B and enterprise designs (like Salesforce) are almost always shit compared to something like a polished SaaS app. But then I learned it's intentional. B2B doesn't like fancy and they tolerate imperfection and boring much more than other domains,. So what you might call "bad" design in one domain can be good and convert better in another. That didn't sit well with me because I'm like "NO!!! You cannot do that!!" On some level though, once you get past basic design fundamentals, a lot of it is subjective and designers often get carried away being concerned with minor details. To your main point: there are plenty of talented designers who are not what you might call "conscious". I've seen no connection aside from the general level of competence that often accompanies higher consciousness. I've collected thousands of screenshots of great designs and just marveled at them and used them for inspiration in trying to create my own designs. That process + learning design fundamentals and tips I think is sufficient. Eventually, you know a good design when you see one. I feel like most people are capable of this, regardless of conscious development. One cool thing having visual design sensitivity is that you can tell how much effort people are putting into things. For example, the actualized.org website isn't responsive in the year 2026. lol.

😂 Yeah, I never questioned it much because maybe I just don't know, but it just seems really odd to have a trip and experience some strange new thing and to call it an awakening. I once took so much LSD, I couldn't even keep my eyes open and existence felt like multiple very large slithering pythons. I was stuck in that state for about 4 hours on the couch. I guess I had the "multiple slithering python" awakening? 😂

Right - the fact that ambition is an illusion is only meaningful if one hasn't already seen through it. But if you haven't seen that yet, when you hear "it's an illusion", you can't help but question if what's driving you is wrong in some way. This could lead to followers trying to reject their ambition. I was pointing to how that could be bad. There's seems to be a sort of purgatory one has to go through before they realize, "yes, it's an illusion, but that doesn't mean it should be rejected." And some might never even make it out of that purgatory. But yes, something has to matter. One could choose many different things to matter, ambition being one.

Right track. It's nice to see some light being shined here. If spiritual teachers were actually responsible regarding psychological well-being/destabilization, they'd provide more than a once-ina-blue-moon 20-word disclaimer. In the real world, people are seeking relief and so they ignore the 20-word disclaimer, and the so-called gurus know this and conveniently ignore it. Also, it's the ultimate scheme: sell a product to a desperate person and if the promise of the vague, abstract product doesn't materialize, it's user error - not product failure. And there's no way to tell, so lock in for the next decade because it's the only way to reach the summit. And in the meantime, buy this other book/course/program to solve the dozens of blocks that will arise, because once you invest enough financially and emotionally, you'll build up sunk-cost fear and start telling yourself lies about who you are and how it's all worth it. Just keep going for another 5 years - the summit is there!". Not that everyone is doing this but I think it's important to be aware of incentives and how spiritual sales funnels operate. For too many, it often loops like this: Suffering prompts search for meaning Spiritual ideas give relief and direction Commitment grows Real-life problems get bypassed/postponed Distress appears again because it's structural Further disengagement from life via abstract ideas Loop keeps going Apparently, they call it "spiritual bypassing" - spirituality as an escape from being a human.

I'm no statistician but I don't see how lifestyle access can be used to measure capacity. It would be like trying to infer intelligence by counting who went to university when half the population couldn't even go. There are plenty of intelligent non-university people who wouldn't show up in the stats.

Some ideas:

So is making distinctions, which is your favorite thing. To say something is an illusion is to imply one should see through it and drop it, but if we’re gonna be consistent, we have to apply that to all illusions. But that would flatten life and wouldn’t be any fun.

You have to go deeper into what the actual problem is. Make your emotional map as high resolution as possible. Is it irrational frustration, agitation, anger? What is it actually? It’s usually not just one thing, but many things serving different functions. Anytime you’re dealing with a problem that has several causal factors with multiple functions, these are not easy to solve. You have to go deep into every facet. Or, if you just want to skip the emotional map, you could just maybe practice loving-kindness meditation on him u til you accept his smell and character traits you don’t like. We resent imposition. And parents impose. So, either stop resenting the impositions or figure how to make them stop. Either way, it’s not an easy problem to solve.

I'm trying to get you to see that's not all you and several others are doing. If someone stood up at a Mozart concert crying "I thirst for the day you compose again! I'm 5 years behind reaching your level of musicianship! The godly gems and divine fragrance of your unique work!" - that's MORE than just gratitude and appreciation going on. No shame in having blind spots - we all have them. The key is to not ignore them when they're pointed out. Using exemplars for aspiration is one thing - praising them to the high heavens is something else. At a certain point, praise crosses over into worship. Praise says "that was valuable, thanks and good job." Worship says "you are elevated and I am below." One is a transaction about content - the other seems to do with peacocking devotionals for various egoic reasons. Just some thoughts. I could be wrong. Good day sir!

I've been alone my whole life because I can't connect with people because they are too shallow. I desperately want to be seen and met but I'm fucking terrified of being ordinary so I judge everyone as beneath me. So I figure I'm isolated because others are too shallow. Since I'm terrified of being ordinary, I can't allow myself to be ordinary with them. This is a common pattern. Happened to me. I remember being a kid and desperately wanting others to play with me in my unique sandbox but all the kids just wanted to play in the normal sandbox. One blind spot Leo has is that he's converted this pain into cosmic insight to avoid feeling it. True integration of difficult truths doesn't feel cool or exciting. It's painful. It feels like grief and humility, then relief. When I saw what an asshole I had been my whole life - resenting people, calling them shallow, mediocre, etc. - and then realized I did it because I was hurt - I bursted into tears. Haven't been the same since. Highly recommend.

They were not right. YOU were wrong in resenting them just because they didn’t want to come play with you in the way you wanted. You could say everything is an illusion, but that’s useless. So long as ambition is serving intelligent ends and providing clean energy, rising tides, it’s not merely an “illusion” that should be dropped. It’s something useful, and even beautiful. I would call it a gift one is lucky to have. The solution to this problem, at least for me, was to uproot neediness, but keep ambition intact, until it is no longer serving you or the greater good.

😂 Textbook

There are no "good and "bad parts" to women. There's just... women. The problem is, boys don't know how to integrate the so-called "bad" parts. They make it personal and project their hatred outward onto women. Because they got ignored, dumped, cheated on, or discarded, and since women will not coddle them, men end up hating them but still wanting them, so they seek to understand them - to game them - rather than to understand how their mind is incorrectly relating to them.

Are you agreeing with me or suggesting the cosmology could justify it?

Strange response to a critique of overt sycophancy.

Whyyyy??? If someone posts to Elon Musk: "I thirst for the day you post again. For me this was the last Godly Gem. I'm at least 5 years behind reaching your level. I can't help but smell the divine exuberant fragrance of your unique work", would we all know that person was an unhinged sycophant?

Intelligence is emergent. If AI mapped out all known problem structures and all known solution patterns, then I can see how it would be able to solve novel problems if it were trained on those structures. And I think that’s actually what they’re working on behind the scenes. They’re not just training them on knowledge and data. They’re training them on problem and solution structures, which are finite. Can you imagine a machine that could instantly identify the problem and instantly know the path to the solution? That day I will come. And when it does, the AI would be more creative than the human, as it will understand the structure of creativity and it will know what is good, bad, useful, and useless creativity.

Stupid = the impulse to act, decide, and conclude in haste with ignorance or rejection of knowledge that would change one’s action, decision, or conclusion. It seems “willful premature closure” is the main thing. Most aren’t stupid because they can’t think. They’re stupid because they stop thinking when it becomes uncomfortable. To go deeper, it is fear of destabilization. They flee discomfort, not truth. Stupidity is usually not lack of intelligence but lack of courage to remain cognitively open under discomfort. Truth requires courage, and most people don’t know they’re afraid. They use rationalizations so well that the fear doesn’t even register. That’s the bitch of it, because fear can’t correct if it’s unconscious.

When you have a shit load of capital, brand awareness, connections with rich people, influence and attention in one domain, all that easily transfers over to almost any other domain without having ANY skill in the new domain. Just look at Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. They're making millions right now in various domains. Do you think these two idiots are also geniuses in business, crypto, and filmmaking? OR does it have something to do with the leverage they got from the family money and connections? If intelligence/skill is the primary factor in success, how do you explain the vast number of millionaire imbeciles like Marjorie Taylor Greene? Absolute dimwit - makes millions every year. I guess she's just got that magic. To grasp complex systems does point to intelligence, but Trump, MTG, and the like are not grasping systems. They're riding unearned leverage. Sure, they did something, but don't act like it's some astonishing feat when someone born into massive leverage has success in multiple domains. And historically, Trump's business record is littered with multiple bankruptcies, lying to banks about asset values, stiffing contractors, etc. He stayed afloat mostly because he had assets and access to credit, not because he was modeling systems like a genius. I'll give him credit for The Apprentice. He did relentlessly push his brand until it finally landed with some TV exec who now feels guilty about defrauding the public with the idea that he was a successful businessman. That show played a huge role in manufacturing the image of a great businessman, which did wonders for Trump in 2016. So yes, he did do something. But narcissistic persistence and attention capture isn't intelligence. 😂

SALT... SALT... Where's the SALT? That's what my dad says at every meal. lol. I don't get what all the hype is about, myself.

To me, wealth is being able to do what you want and buy what you want with money never coming up as a limitation, and never having to do things you don't want in exchange for money. 5 million USD earns about $15k/mo interest from treasury bonds alone. If someone can't relax with 15k/mo, I feel for them.