Extreme Z7

@Patrique I noticed that most (actually, all) of your expectations of how art should shape the world is shallow and materialistic. Caring more about gross obvious traits of reality and not able to tap into more subtle nuanced parts of it like philosophical aspects or existential parts that art can bring to the forefront of human consciousness. If it were the case that realism was all that mattered, Picasso and others like him would have been homeless. It's up to you to really shape yourself to desire the subtle. Stop normalizing your self-identity that you are a low-consciousness human being especially if you're aware of these concepts. You ain't gonna get better if you keep normalizing low-consciousness in your life. Have the desire and do some real effort to pursue high-consciousness living. You're like a self-aware donkey that chooses to remain a self-aware donkey because "donkey's gonna do what a donkey's gonna do. That's just life!". LOL. You know artwork that showcases pain and suffering exists right?

I really need help with something. For the first time in my life, I experienced a strong surge of fear near the end of my meditation session. This was, by far, one of the most concentrated and focused I was during a meditation session and I reached an almost non-dual state near the end. But after a few seconds of being in that state, I felt strong sensations of fear from the lower portion of my body then it rose upwards then I was basically just covered in it. It didn't even feel like I was scared of anything outside of me, it was just pure fear arising on its own. Has anyone experienced this before? I really want to get to bottom of what this was and what this means for my meditation practice because I sure as hell want to avoid having more experiences like these.

Dunno. Interesting question, though.

@TJ Reeves Cool. I'm still a rookie kid as far as spiritual development goes. I'm still not even close to where you're at. in fact the most recent spiritual insight I've had today is that I really do have tons and tons of spiritual purification work that I still need to do before I get anywhere deep.

Regular people are MAD! Stay away! Hide in a cave and meditate there for 50 years until they all inevitably destroy themselves.

@SFRL Spit on a person's face. Their reaction is a good litmus test for how mature they are. No, seriously.

I don't really like to post much about my enlightenment work (or even results on much of any personal development domain) because I'm extremely introverted and don't have much desire to share them. However, I think I've made enough progress with enlightenment after the past few months of doing self-inquiry for an hour a day that I thought it'd be a good idea to share them. Nothing mind-blowing yet but there are noticeable changes. I now notice that there is no experience that is outside of me. An experience of a far-away mountain landscape occurs "within my head". And the experience of my head/scalp is itself not outside of "me", or not something that "covers" me. There is no difference between nothing/something or existence/non-existence. All moments of experience are something and nothing at the same time. And Nothing (with a capital N) is not "nothing" as people would conventionally conceptualize nothing but Nothing is synonymous with Everything. "You" are a lot easier to find if you just stop seeking. But the stopping of the seeking is more of a passive event rather than active decision but also feels like a bit of both. Like the active decision was a passive event. I now notice that enlightenment has no value. That's kind of why it's the most important thing for humanity right now. (Additionally, that also made me realize that nothing has value. Even things that have "value" have no value) I believe that I still have to climb a thousand Mount Everests stacked upon each other to get into some really deep shit, so this isn't me bragging about how far I've gone. In fact, it still feels like my enlightenment results are pretty shallow. I'll be pushing myself further to the best of my abilities in the future, or maybe play some video games or whatever.

Why not hold both mindsets? Know consciously that success will never make you truly happy. Pursue it consciously anyway.

July 15, 2017 - Saturday Did nothing LP-related today because I meditated for 10 hours because why not?

INTRODUCTION Several months ago, I started a journal here called Upgrading to the Maximum Level In Life. It lasted for only a few months before I stopped writing in it. Now, several months later, I realized why. I tried to make a daily commitment with a lack of true focus on what I actually wanted out of it. I saw it as 'Personal Development Journal' but I wasn't really focused on what I was doing, personal-development-wise, at the time. I was basically still at a phase where I was gathering self-help theory mainly from Leo's videos without really having a main vision or goal yet. So what happened was that writing every entry felt tedious because I usually didn't feel like I was writing about something I was excited about. So eventually I just stopped... However, over the last several months or so, I found myself slowly realizing a deep passion that I'm still struggling to fully express. I don't feel like I'm even close to 1% of embodying my deepest passions and motivations. Of course, I'm talking about Life Purpose. Right now, I actually have three different passions that are driving me, Drawing, Music Production, and Game Development. The problem with having multiple life purposes is that it's very hard to fully focus on a single project and really get good work done in any one field. Recently, I kind of decided that Game Development was going to be my main life purpose whereas the other two are going to be my 'lesser' life purposes. However, I find that sense of vision is still not crystal clear and that I really need to focus and contemplate more to gain a much bigger for what I want in my life and what I want to do with it. So, in the hopes of improving my sense of ultimate purpose in life. I decided to start this journal about my Life Purpose. Every evening, I will write about what I did during the day to pursue my life purpose further, even if I made it only a slug's tiptoe length for the day. (I haven't bought Leo's Life Purpose yet as I still live my parents and I don't have a job but it's on my wishlist, alright...) So. . . I'm going to start by assessing my current situation Right now I have two ongoing serious creative projects: A 2D Platformer Game Project Made In Unity A Daily Drawing Habit because why not? I've also been trying to get myself to make more music but I can't seem to motivate myself to find the time even though I love making music more than drawing. What I want to accomplish with this journal: Gain a clearer picture of where I'm currently at with Life Purpose Gain a clearer picture of what I want to do with my life Gain more high quality motivation and improve my level of commitment as I write about my accomplishments for the day Gain some help from the community here on Actualized.org I'll be writing my first entry later this evening. Unlike when I was writing my last journal, this time I have an actual clear goal. Here's to hoping I don't mess it up.

@Visitor Good for you I myself am very very far from being accustomed to that kind of lifestyle. I'm still pretty attached to my electronics and entertainment although I am still pretty young. i did just meditate for 10 hours today, though. It was to challenge myself. I believe I've gotten even more benefits from that compared to my 7-day no-power experience.

July 6, 2017 I was minding my own business, when suddenly the lights went out and the ground began shaking. A 6.5 magnitude earthquake just hit my area of residence. It was not that strong where I was and my house was basically unscathed but from what I heard, it hit the local power plant really bad. It would take a week before the power would come back. The power just came back a few hours ago as I write this and I thought I would like to share my experience of living with no power for about 7 days. (Through a personal development perspective, of course) My Normal Routine: Do some minor exercise and yoga first thing in the morning before breakfast then work with "hyper-speed" on various projects. I'm a recent Computer Science graduate with no employment but have convinced my parents that I won't look for a job yet until I pass a certain prominent I.T. fundamentals exam scheduled this October so I can easily get an I.T. related job without hassle. Unfortunately, I.T. has nothing to do with my creative life purpose. I'm seriously considering becoming a music producer (specifically a video game music producer). I also do a bit of drawing occasionally, okay,. . quite a lot of drawing, actually. Plus, I have a big indie game project that I started 2 years ago back when I was seriously considering becoming a game developer before changing my mind. However, the project still isn't finished and I don't want to abandon it completely and I believe it will still take several months before I can really complete it and focus on other things. I'm also the only developer working on the game, I make everything from the coding to artwork to the music. Bundle that with my 1 hour daily meditation habit and 30 minute daily self inquiry habit. And also me trying to squeeze in some reading there as well. And it's still not the full picture because of family matters, addictions and distractions. My Happiness Level: Not very high. I'm overworked and stressed out. No surprise there. My Routine After The Earthquake: My exercise and yoga in the morning was not affected at all. The only activities I could engage in with no power was meditation, reading, and drawing without the POWER of using google for image references. I had much less distraction. During the hours I normally would spend either working on a project or in entertainment/distraction was spent mostly drawing (I plan to post all the drawings I made soon). On two separate days I went outside and did nothing but walk around town for about an hour or so (Although I do actually do this occasionally during my normal routine as well). I did 1 hour of self-inquiry work a day instead of the usual half hour. I would also occasionally do long sits of doing nothing when I didn't want to draw, read books, or go outside. Unfortunately, I've already read all the self-help/personal development-related books I have so all the books I read during the week were fiction books for entertainment purposes. My Happiness Level: Mostly bored as hell but a few days into it, I noticed that I wasn't stressed out. This simplistic lifestyle was refreshing and I learned a few things about how I should restructure my normal routine in order to live a more conscious life. Even the fiction books were really helpful, I could lose myself in a world of fantasy instead of thinking about my work schedule like I usually do. Things I Learned: Peace is more important than Productivity I don't need to go on "hyper-speed" all the time. It's incredibly unconscious and it makes me feel miserable. Better to work mindfully and take breaks whenever I'm losing concentration. I can cut my workload in half and my distractions by a lot more but it will take a lot of emotional work. But the important thing is that I can do it. It's going to be especially difficult while my mind won't let go of that big game project but when I finish it, there will be a huge space that I'll have to handle strategically. I should probably be drawing more even though it's just a side-hobby for me. It's a really easy outlet for me to get my imagination out there. I should buy more personal-development-books. I clearly don't have enough personal-development books. All of the above should be implemented slowly and with patience.

July 14, 2017 - Friday One Week With No Power

July 5, 2017 - Wednesday Currently working on a new music track for my game project. Starting a new song is usually tricky but was met with more resistance than usual with this particular one because I was having a hard time trying to come up with creative ideas. I noticed that this is all a matter of just pushing through. and making sure that I take real steps each day. i wish I had more time during the day or had less of a sleep quota so I could move to mastery quicker but I have to keep reminding myself to be patient. Oh and tomorrow I really shouldn't forget to write a secret message in my entry for the day like I did yesterday.

July 4, 2017 - Tuesday I forgot to post this in my last entry. I've been wanting to seriously pursue electronic music production for a long time. I don't know yet where it will take me in the future but I should really just focus on gaining more and more practice each day. I'm also currently studying for a Fundamentals of I.T. Engineering exam to hopefully get hired at my first job. It has nothing to do with my life purpose (not directly anyway). Just something I'm doing to hopefully earn some money that will definitely help but it is eating up a significant part of time. Also, I'm still making tiny babysteps progress with my game project. P.S. If you listened to the track, you may have noticed that I used a sample from Leo's What is God video? I just thought it would be fun.

July 2, 2017 - Sunday I haven't posted in a while because I got caught up in various festivities involving my family. Basically, I had little time to get creative work done. I don't really have much motivation right now to write all the details but I will say that I've considered getting into classical Indian-style yoga today inspired by one of Leo's recent blog posts. I'm doing it in the hopes that it will help me to become more focused and productive and of course, also bring a ton of other great benefits as well especially with emotional mastery. I'll be talking about this more tomorrow. And tomorrow I gotta be cheerful or Santa will put me in his naughty list.

In my opinion, the problem with Sam Harris is that he puts in the effort to achieve some spiritual experience then instead of embodying the truth in his daily life or putting in even more effort into going deeper, he thwarts his own efforts through mental masturbation.

June 28, 2017 - Wednesday Pretty much just more work done today. In regards to my game project, I really am still in the middle of a very slow process. I'm in the part where the excitement of the initial idea has run out and I have to just keep pushing through the boredom and monotony of the work. I don't think it's likely that I'm going to be passionate of a game programming job in the future. I've always had this dream of becoming a video game music composer, though. Ever since I was a little kid, I was obsessed with the soundtracks of various games that I played. So, naturally, I still spent quite a bit of time working on a music track I'm currently producing. Didn't have much time though because I spent so much time on the game project. I pretty much did what I wanted to do today. I hope tomorrow is the day Donald Trump gets impeached. . . I mean gets him a peach.

June 26, 2017 - Monday Looks like I couldn't go back to regular routine today. i forgot that I still had college graduation ceremonies to deal with and it ate up quite a significant chunk of my time today. I still managed to get some creative work done but only a little. I've been learning to feel okay with it regarding the fact that I'm also going to be pretty busy with other occasions as well this week like my actual graduation ceremony and an annual Fiesta tradition my culture has coming this Friday. But that's Friday, tomorrow I will find a piece of chewed gum under my shoe, I will name it Alfred.

June 24, 2017 - Saturday I decided to take a little break today. I was feeling both stressed out and bored with my game project so I thought I'd just lay back today and play some video games all day. I do, however, still have that new music-production practice I started this week so I did spend more time learning from internet videos and directly working on a new track. I still feel a lot of resistance when making music because I don't have much experience so I keep encountering problems with deciding what to do next and how to do it when making a song. Tomorrow I'll get back to my normal routine. Today felt good and was really effective at easing out the stress so I plan to try to do this once a week to avoid burnout. Oh and tomorrow JKG, stop liking my posts you annoying worm! (it's a joke. . . you may now laugh hysterically).

June 22, 2017 - Thursday I've decided to begin replacing my daily drawing habit with a daily music production practice habit. Yesterday, I've decided to break the routine which I started on August 2016. Almost made it a year but that wasn't exactly my goal. I started it because I thought it that getting good at drawing was one of my greatest passions and it still is but I found that I enjoy listening to and creating music a lot more and I just don't have much time have both routines in place at the same time. I'll still be drawing, though, I'm just not making it a daily habit anymore. Anyway, what happened today? Spent about a couple of hours working on my game project. I wanted to spend a lot more time on it but I spent the morning studying for a Basic Engineering Exam which I will be taking on October and part of the afternoon with my family at the mall. No drawing or reading today. Spent more time learning and practicing electronic music production. I'm essentially making music purely through a computer rather than through any kind of instruments, not even a MIDI keyboard. What happens tomorrow? Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. Today, I live. Tomorrow I live some more because go away!

June 20, 2017 - Tuesday Overslept today. Felt pretty frustrated about it. It can be hard for me to get up early I really to have as much time as I can to do what I want to do everyday. Hoping that it doesn't happen again although it probably will. What has been done today? Didn't have the time to spend working on my game today as I was pretty with some college-related stuff. I'm already graduating but I still have some clearance issues to deal with. I do, however, plan to work on it for about a half hour or so after writing this entry. I did actually, spend some time working on this: That's about it actually, didn't have much to do anything else. What to do tomorrow? Same plans as yesterday. I just hope I don't oversleep this time. Have you seen the news lately? They say that tomorrow Voldemort will rise back to power!

June 19, 2017 - Monday Pretty boring day, not much interesting occurred. I'm still working hard at my game project and I haven't really had much simply quiet time to just ponder and reflect. For now, I'm just a busy bee. Kinda waiting for my graduation ceremony, though. Can't wait to get this absurd college stuff which has plagued me for 5 years behind me for good. Your homework, Kevin? Spent more than 3 hours doing level design/coding work for my game project. I'm getting close to having enough to make a new preview video again, this one's going to be of the first level. More digital artwork for the game as usual. Read some more The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. I still can't follow 80% of it so I'm hoping a book summary will help me understand the book. Haven't had much motivation to do anything music production-related lately. Probably because I want to be able to focus on one thing at a time and right now, that's being taken over by my game project. Your homework to be submitted to tomorrow involves. . . Continue working on Level 1 to get closer to making a preview video of it. Continue drawing more digital art for the game Read more from The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and also part of a summary of it. (Optional) Do anything related to music production. Oh how I love sleep! Tomorrow THERE WILL BE NO SLEEP!

Why are we talking about this?

Your cognitive style is... Intellectual Your organizational style is... Balanced Your energy style is... Introverted Your stress management style is... Resilient Your interpersonal style is... Competitive Your Scores on All 30 Personality Traits Openness Traits Your level of imagination is high. Your level of artistic interests is about average. Your level of emotionality is about average. Your level of adventurousness is about average. Your level of intellectual interest is high. Your level of liberalism is high. Conscientiousness Traits Your level of self-efficacy is about average.. Your level of orderliness is low. Your level of dutifulness is about average. Your level of achievement striving is high. Your level of cautiousness is low. Extraversion Traits Your level of friendliness is low. Your level of gregariousness is low. Your level of assertiveness is about average. Your activity level is about average. Your level of excitement-seeking is high. Your level of cheerfulness is high. Neuroticism Traits Your level of anxiety is about average. Your level of anger is low. Your level of depression is low. Your level or selfconsciousness is low. Your level of immoderation is low. Your level of vulnerability is low. Agreeableness Traits Your level of trust is low. Your level of honesty is about average. Your level of altruism is low. Your level of cooperation is about average. Your level of modesty is about average. Your level of sympathy is low. Bonus Traits Your level of cooking is McDonalds-quality Your level of The Force is The Dark Side Your favorite color is blue Your famous pop-culture icon is Harry Potter Your level of fried chicken is wait. . . what? If you read this, your level of gullibility (You as in 'YOU, the reader') is high.