Joshe

I feel like this post would be more powerful if you could delve into the mechanics of this. You could probably articulate it better than me but I’ll stream of consciousness some things: When I was younger I was rejected because I was different, and I’ve always known I was different, and I’ve put a lot of thought into that difference, and experienced a ton of negative emotions about it, but have converted them to positive to make life easier. Society rejects me, I reject them. And what is my rationale for rejecting them? They are blind and cannot see clearly - they can’t see all the things I can, they’re ignorant. This is true, but it’s still a defense mechanism - it masks our pain and turns us is into justified assholes towards our fellow humans. Its a heavy, unconscious burden. Deconstruct “I’m the one who can see” or whatever your rationale is for rejecting “normies”. It’s not simply “they don’t value truth and truth is my highest value, therefore I’m incompatible with normies”. This is post-hoc rationalization for something much deeper.

It seems spiritual experiences are state shifts marked by metacognitive realizations. But this is not usually groundbreaking or earth-shattering for those who are naturally highly metacognitive. Someone who naturally operates with high metacognition hears stories of "awakening experiences" and thinks "wait, you mean you didn't already notice that you were having thoughts? You couldn't already observe your emotional reactions as they arose? You never thought to question the stories you were telling yourself about who you are?" When someone has lived 30 years identified with their ego suddenly realizes, "If I can see the thought, I cannot be the thought." and thinks that is a breakthrough, a highly metacognitive person feels like they're getting excited about discovering their own thumbs. lol. What if the spiritual seeker's "profound realization" is just the introverted intuitive kid's everyday life? How can we know? What if the metacognitive space is the substrate of spirituality and "spirituality" is simply a matter of exploring, reconfiguring, adding and/or subtracting in that space?

Beautimus!

If you think it’s difficult now, it will only get more difficult as time goes on. The moment you start having serious doubt about long term and start feeling trapped, it’s best to end it because the longer you wait, the harder it gets. At least, that’s how it was for me. I was so worried about hurting them that I couldn’t break it off, which led to hell on earth, a couple of times.

I never cared to look into it but I was going through severe burnout and trying to get to the bottom of it, and that search led to ND. I always kind of just felt like, “so what if you’re ND, it’s just a label, you’re still you, it doesn’t change anything, therefore a useless abstraction that usually traps people in victim mindset.”, but I was wrong. It was very explanatory. The literature actually has words to explain us very well. One benefit to finding out was increased self-acceptance. I even had the thought “what if what I’ve been calling my ‘Ni’ is just ND”, lol. It could be, and if true, funny af. I had your thought about evolution as well. I think OP has a strong point that the vast majority of people attracted to this space are likely ND. If I were to guess, I’d guess you are.

@Hojo Finding out didn't make me think I have a disability or anything is wrong with me. I didn't experience it as negative. I view my ND as a gift. I wouldn't want it any other way. I don't care what anyone else thinks about it. And I'm also not making it my identity - I don't think "I'm autistic". I live the same as I lived before I found out, just a little lighter.

Which is why you can't have someone like this at the top. The rot spreads from the top down.

@Cred 100% I just found out I'm autistic af about 4 months ago. No formal diagnosis but I dove into it and fit the mould almost perfectly. I plugged in my tendencies, preferences, actions, etc into multiple AIs and had them estimate likelihood this person is ND, and they all said 95%. There are some VERY big, and what many here would consider devastating implications for finding out about this. If they really wanted to fuck their ego, they'd pull on this thread. I wept pretty hard upon processing it all, but it was a relief. Finally, a strong explanation.

No, you can't be ready to offer websites to clients in one week. Not even 3 months. You need deep submersion for a minimum of 9 months, I'd say, and that's probably too optimistic. You have to survey the entire landscape and know what all the things are, and it's a big fucking landscape. The secret to making it on Upwork is: - Provide high quality work - Over-deliver - Maintain a 5-star profile with a 100% job success score - Communicate well - Be responsive - Start out cheap and only focus on getting 5-star reviews - don't even worry about money. It's against their TOS but I told clients when I was starting out I could do their work for next to nothing in return for a high quality review. There will be some cheap clients who will take that bargain, so use them to build your profile. Also, Upwork is saturated with web developers - it's a race to the bottom - so you need a niche. I was successful on Upwork by building HTML emails and landing pages for marketers in their automation platforms like Pardot, Marketo, Hubspot, etc. I no longer have to rely on Upwork because I found a few agencies who keep me busy. Ideally, you'd find and stick to a handful of clients who can keep you busy so you're not always switching context and having to learn new client processes all the time. But in the beginning, you gotta take anything and everything and over-deliver it all. You gotta grind hard for like a year or two.

I should have been more explicit. I meant "metacognitive space", not simply thoughts about thoughts. I meant the space the realization those thoughts about thoughts occur in. I suppose the term might just be "awareness", but I feel that's a loaded term with too much baggage. Experientially, "metacognitive space" makes more sense to me.

Interesting perspective.

My default mode is observer operating within metacognitive space. When I dissolve the observer, I have direct experience of the metacognitive space itself. It's just one step away and it doesn't seem like anything magical or mystical because I'm already in that space, just with narration and content, which can be dropped if I want, but I don't see the point because it just makes it empty and neutral.

Haha, good point. Spirituality is supposed to produce well-being, not destabilize it. I wonder if your spiritual work is causing you chronic stress, then you’re simply not doing it right? It was causing me stress, so I stopped. One idea of spirituality is to be at peace, not with all, but with myself. I can see this would take dedication and work, which would compete with other priorities. Having competing priorities was a stressor for me. I decided that I’ll work towards it after I’m done playing my survival game, when I can devote my resources to it - hopefully, in the next 10-20 years I’ll start back on my tattiwigwanda. Lol. I intuit the bulk of the work is not “understanding”, but “letting go”.

When Leo dropped his 5meo video, I was like “holy shit I gotta try that”. I was super excited but I couldn’t easily acquire it, so it remained a desire for like 3 years. Within that time, much came to light. I realized that 5meo would be like any other psychedelic - you have a profound experience and then come back to reality. I saw the clinging, the obsession, the delusion, and the separation. It started to seem unwise.

A good disclaimer for your book list. I scoffed at my dimwit ex girlfriend for telling me “books are stupid”. But looking back, she did have a point.

Lol, thanks! Yeah, the dim and small font is intentional - for my eyes only, so fuck contrast ratios! I ain't gonna make it screen-reader compliant either. 😂 I showed you the zoomed in versions too, lol.

Been working on a new app to help manage my freelance gig. This is the aesthetic I'm currently into for UI. Basically Tailwind zinc theme and high contrast colors. Love dark mode. Probably should tone the green down a bit. Also recently built my own command launcher/raycast type thing, which is efficient af. Claude code baby!

You don't know nothin' about slithering pythons bro. 😂

True, and something else to look out for: Having genuine insight makes it easy to assume others are only operating conceptually, when in fact they may be tracking the same thing but from a different angle. This showed up in my relationship to Leo's work early on. He'd make statements like “you don't understand,” and my response was always, “yeah, I am probably missing something.” I never had an ego around my ability to think, so when an intelligent person says that I don't understand, my default stance is acceptance and inquiry. But over time I gained enough epistemic confidence to actually test those claims. And I often found they were wrong - sometimes very wrong. Not only was I seeing and tracking the thing, I was often doing it better than they were. So, it seems like there are two traps here: one for the epistemically humble who over-defers for too long, and one for the person that has genuine insight but over-generalizes it and assumes others don't see what they see. "The meta-pattern is that genuine understanding doesn't necessarily produce legible explanations, and legible explanations don't necessarily indicate genuine understanding." Side note: I have a problem with the word "illusion" in the way it's typically used here. To call something that exists - like "ambition" - an illusion feels sloppy and just isn't right. A dream also isn't an illusion. Well said.

I'm aware of the "isness" when my mind isn't doing it's thing, but I haven't made it beautiful yet. I mean, it has been, but it's not usually. Usually, it's just neutral awareness of it. But maybe that's exactly what it should be or maybe recontextualization is necessary? Yeah, I'm just letting things happen organically. I'm sure I'll get back on the wagon at some point.

@Natasha Tori Maru How is it not about meaning? Beauty and love are meaningful to me. As you know, I haven't prioritized spirituality, but to me, it seems to be about beauty and love. I haven't put a ton of thought into it actually, so I'm genuinely curious.

Yes, we're in agreement. I said "Spirituality as an escape from being a human." in the context of explaining the all-too-common path. I probably shouldn't have put it on its own line like that because is does kinda read like "is".

😂