Extreme Z7

@ZenBlue You don't have to cringe about mechanical/automatic habits you've had in the past. If your conscious of it, you can work to make your future less mechanical and more intention-driven. I'm 19 years old, I've only been doing personal development for over a year. My biggest regret in my younger years is not that I spent most of it playing video games but that I spent almost all my free time being a daydreamer. I'd daydream about all sorts ideas for cartoon shows, video games, comics, but I was so completely unaware that I wasn't actually doing anything. My younger self was always focused on quick stimulation and the older I got the quicker and better stimulation I demanded until I suddenly had an existential panic attack at 18. It came out of nowhere. I think I mentioned this in my Actualization Journal, I was so confused and so lost that I searched "What is Happiness?" on YouTube. That's when I found Leo's work, that's when the trajectory of my life completely changed. I look back at those days and notice just how robotic and clueless I was. I assume you can relate to that very much. Everyday of my life now is trying to learn how to realize all the ideas I had in my daydreams. This is why I also commit myself to self-actualization.

@ZenBlue Thanks! You have no idea how obsessed I am with finishing this new game. I started work on it last year and after several months I've gotten good progress in it but I still think it will take more months until I get anywhere near finished. I'm a single developer but I recently asked one of my college-mates if he was interested in helping me with the background art. This game is a 2D platformer mainly inspired by the Crash Bandicoot series. I'll likely release it as a free product but I feel like I should get some payment for all the effort I'm putting into it so maybe I'll put up a donation campaign for it when I reveal it to the world.

<--[03-17-16]--> Becoming Steve Jobs I've been reading a book called "Becoming Steve Jobs" recently. Written by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. I spent 2 hours of my time today reading it just after meditation because I had the free time. I've only read the first three chapters. I really want to say that I was amazed at just how much of a failure Jobs was at his early career. I don't mean that he struggled with success, he was just unrealistically ambitious and that backfired on him multiple times to the point where he quit the company that he started. Not to mention he was hard to work with and was insanely arrogant and couldn't stand not producing the best products he can think of. I've always had this idea that successful people earn small levels of success early on and that just grows and grows until they achieve big success but this book so far has shattered that idea of mine and I haven't even finished it yet. I'm already in the fourth chapter and I don't think I've gotten to the point where he managed to rise to be one of the world's greatest entrepreneur. I know have the idea that truly successful people experience massive disconnects with their ambition in life and only slowly bumble their way too it by numerous hurdles and delays. I think I made the right decision when I told myself that I would invest what little money I have right now on books. I don't know why I have not yet talked about a single book I've read in this journal until now. I only have handful and I think "Becoming Steve Jobs" could be one of my top ones so far. But who knows, I'm bound to find more high quality stuff in the future but for now, I want to focus on finishing what I have. Also spent a little time working on the game I'm developing. It's been a while since I've done that. Can't wait to finish it though, I am really ambitious about game development as well as music production. I feel to lazy and unmotivated to write even a single paragraph in the new post in my blog that I'm working on. Doesn't matter anyway, it's not that important, I guess. Also I watched this half-hour film on YouTube and it is fantastic. It's a claymation film about ghosts and burgers. Who wouldn't want to watch a film about ghosts and burgers? Kudos to Lee Hardcastle for this wonderful film! EDIT: I JUST NOTICED THAT THIS IS MY 100th POST ON THIS FORUM! I think this deserves a celebration gif!

<--[03-16-16]--> Getting Back On Track Okay, so today I had to work on college presentation. I spent a good part of my day practicing and rehearsing and it went out pretty well. The instructor had his criticisms and I paid attention but I listened. I actually do not consider myself a very good speaker or even writer but that's only because my ego is still an ignorant and neurotic entity that can't help but judge itself for no good reason. Meditation today was okay. Another one of those inconsistent ones though were I spend one part very unfocused and then have a high sense of awareness and then unconsciously fall into a daydream. I decided to start writing my 3rd blog entry but I don't want to spend the entire night writing it so I decided to write a short section. That's all for today. Thank you for reading.

@ZenBlue Nice to read those awesome things from you. I get how you feel about TV because I was like that as a child before with video games. I still play video games though but I almost never exceed more than half and hour of playtime per day, usually just 10 minutes. Problem with TV though is that it expects you to waste hours of your time to get any sense of satisfaction from it. Hope this is going to make some major life trajectory changes for you. There's so much more out there to discover for yourself. Currently I'm studying about stress and how stress works. Like actually deeply trying to get an understanding of it. I probably wouldn't even care about it if I spent hours of my time lazily sitting in front of a TV screen or playing video games.

Ooh. Glad to know other people here follow Mooji's lectures. I listen to them as mp3's whenever I need to go outside.

<--[03-15-16]--> Getting Worse Didn't feel very energetic today. A lot of my energy was basically drained by college work again. I did manage to work a bit on music. I wrote a memo in my phone to remind me to work on music as much as possible before I graduate and have no choice but to jump into the real world. Class ended 7pm today. I'm so exhausted. Another one of those days that I don't want to write about anything else because I'm so tired. I have to sleep early. Good Night.

Getting Really Good at Meditation Building Mindfulness or Pure Awareness of your Perceived Reality Strategizing What's It Going To Take To Make Big Life Changes Delaying Gratification Getting Rid of the Addiction of "Doing" Getting Rid of the Addiction of "Thinking" Getting Comfortable Doing Stuff That Is Radically Different From What Modern Society Does Getting Comfortable With Loneliness Getting Comfortable With Being In The Spotlight Losing Your Sense Of Self And those are just the first things that come to mind, there are so much more I can list. I myself still have not fully mastered the principles needed to even get close to solving any of these problems. But again, don't worry about this now. You'll cross these bridges when you get there. Personal Development takes a lifetime commitment. I've been without television for about a year and a half now and it feels like it wasn't even the beginning of the true difficulties of this commitment.

<--[03-14-16]--> Getting Better I want to start today's entry with the boring stuff first. NEW TRACK. I uploaded it last night after I wrote yesterday's entry. It's still hardcore techno and it's based on an obscure internet meme created by an obscure youtuber who goes by the name of "I Hate Everything". I'm getting really used to hardcore techno and I'm not really sure if I should focus on it a bit more or if it's time to leave my comfort zone to expand my horizons when it comes to musical skills. Currently, I think I need to focus a bit more still on hardcore techno but not for too long as that would be bad strategy. Speaking of strategy, I've been thinking a lot about the principles I learned in Leo's latest video. It seems like another one of those episodes where the topic is so incredibly deep that we may need to learn more about it ourselves very rigorously. Other examples of this I can recall was the "Understanding Awareness" and "Curing Perfectionism" videos. I decided to convert this episode to an mp3 so I can listen to it multiple times as I walk to college and back until I get sick of it or a new episode comes a long. This video felt like another game-changer for me. As I walked contemplating the routines and habits in place with my life and combined that with the results I want and the problems I still currently have. I was just amazed by how the majority of what I'm doing is just a huge waste of time. I can't help but notice the routines that are in place that my ego fools me into thinking needs to be done but can actually be minimized/cut entirely. Again, this new video introduced an incredibly deep topic that I feel I'm only beginning to scratch the surface of. Just like the "Understanding Awareness" video caused me to go through the next several months constantly noticing how clueless I am with perceiving reality, this new video has caused me to notice all the pointless (or should I say unstrategic) things I'm doing. Here are a few examples: Being stressed out about college work (This is a big one) Worrying about lack of finance Obsessing over quality of my creative work instead of learning to increase creative ability (this has wasted too much of my time) Forgetting the importance of allocating time to read books Almost letting video games back to my daily routine (Almost!) Forgetting to make plans to achieve goals before executing (this is pretty unspecific but you see what I mean)

You'll be fine. In my experience, getting rid of TV not just for 30 days but as a lifetime decision is actually one of the easiest personal development challenges. After that, there are so many more hurdles you have to jump through that are significantly more demanding of your willpower and discipline. Getting rid of TV seems like nothing after you've encountered these harder challenges that I'm talking about. But don't worry about that, focus on the present. Focus on the challenge now! So, you've decided to kick your TV habit that's wasting hours of your time. Be careful that your ego does not put you into an equally addictive and time-wasting activity. What matters here is not getting rid of TV but breaking bad routine so you can replace it with good habits.

Sometimes I wonder whether the external world of perceptions still exist when we're trapped in a thought. At least in my experience, whenever I find myself trapped in a daydream while walking or sitting down or meditating then go back to reality, it almost feels like the external perceptions have simply vanished during those moments. I am a frequent daydreamer so I experience this a lot. I've heard in enlightenment lectures before that awareness never actually goes away. Even when it feels like we lose consciousness for a few moments, that is only a thought. In reality, the awareness is always there and thoughts are like dirt on a window that you need to wipe every now and again. I also suspect that our awareness never actually experiences moments when we're sleeping (assuming one is not dreaming). And that in sleep there is an odd jump in time that we don't notice. It feels like we've slept for how many hours but what if we've actually time traveled from the point we went to sleep and the point we woke up (again assuming a dream did not occur). Kinda freaky. ------------------------------------ @Costa Who's saying that we need to abandon all advancements and knowledge of science? That's not what I said. Just like you should be detached from relationships, does not mean you should avoid relationships altogether. A lot of people are fully distracted by technology and advancements that they forget that they don't need it. They can use it to their advantage mind you, that's what everyone doing personal development should do is use scientific inventions to their full potential but also don't forget they they are just extensions. Ultimately, your core as a human being needs the most focus. ------------------------------------

@Leo Gura I remember reading somewhere in Robert Greene's "Mastery" that it is said that a feeling of lack of self-worth is usually experienced just before enlightenment. Is this the ego realizing that the world it created and its role in it does not exist?

@Costa I see no distinction between scientific advancements and material possessions especially when it comes to gadgets. I don't see your point when you say you were talking about humanity and not just personal life. I did not say that you were speaking of personal life. I recognized fully that you were speaking of humanity as a whole. And that's what I spoke of. I was just rebutting your claim that being less attached to inventions of humanity with scientific advancement will make us lesser human beings. If we take into account Claire Graves model, this isn't true, at least for people who are already educated. Be careful of the way you communicate to other people. You're coming across as a particularly egotistical man who thinks he's above everyone else. You're probably a decent human being but here on the internet it's pretty easy to act like an ass and get little consequence. I want to talk about the main topic but I have a college lecture to go to first. I'll try to join in the conversation when I get back.

<--[03-13-16]--> Got My Ass Inspired (again) Leo's video today really struck a chord with me today. For the past few weeks I've been having a bad time with negative stressful mindsets. I took notes, obviously. I feel like this one is going to help me back on track. For the past weeks I've been very worried about my academic standing and being constantly distracted by it, maybe now I can get the mindset shift to really focus on what I really need to be working on. I got so busy with creative work that I almost forgot to write this entry. It's pretty late at night so I don't want to talk about anything else but this. I'm going to end it here. Good Night or Day, depending on what time it is wherever you are on the world. I'm going to bed.

So I've been reading your recent entries and honestly, I think you're very weird. . . . . . . looks like I have a lot to learn from you.

Actually, that's a very backwards view of psychology. If you know anything about Claire Graves model of psychological development, the majority of people in society are in "orange stage" also known as "materialistic". What Purple Jay advocated in his reply was to stop caring about the external/material world. You say that that kind of thinking would put as back to worse times but actually it's the exact opposite! In order to advance to the next stage of psychological development, we need more people to recognize that external and material gains will never make one happy. Ultimately, science can create all the technology you want to improve your life but it will ultimately lead to an unfulfilled life. The next stage is "green stage" or "personalistic". At this stage people care about other people and how to improve everyone's lives particularly through the help of good understanding with psychology. Do you see the absolutely absurd way you aggrandize all those external and material objects in your possession? To somebody actually advanced in higher stages of psychological development than the "orange materialistic stage", this actually very ridiculous and quite ignorant. It's an ass-backwards way of valuing life. (I would actually be very interested if Leo made a video on "How to Properly Value Life") Here's an article summarizing Claire Grave's model of Psychological Development: http://vievolve.com/values-systems-4/ And here's a video made by Leo explaining it in detail:

<--[03-12-16]--> Arguing to Other People About Reality Several months ago, I got into an internet argument with a 40 year old man on a different forum. It was less of an argument and more of an unconscious-chimps-throwing-shit-at-each-other yelling fight. At the time I was very emotional and unaware, I was so focused on working on a college project at the same time while going back to this forum seeing what's up. This guy was a guy who claimed to watch the news a lot and still watch TV. Being the ideological person that I was when it came to personal development, I criticized his obsession with the news and even linked to him one of Leo's videos on why he should stop watching television. That was a bad idea, he got pissed. He started bragging that he's more than 20 years older than me and that I'm an idiot for following a guru. Obviously, this let me lose my balance put me into a very emotionally unaware state. I started spouting nonsense about joy and happiness that even I don't believe in making me look a like a delusional twat. The guy then retorted by attacking those too. He even said that happiness is ultimately an illusion and the Leo is just some arrogant guru I shouldn't be listening to. The 40 year old adult himself was also pretty emotionally immature and started yapping a lot of stuff that he shouldn't have said, calling me a miserable person who wants to hide from reality. In retrospect, I wish I could have told him that just because I choose not to watch the news, doesn't mean I hide from the reality of whats going on and also despite the fact that most of the time, my mind is stuck in negative emotions, I've spent countless hours studying the workings of the mind and doing self-observation and mindfulness about consciousness to know that absolute happiness is possible to achieve without falling into the trap of delusion. The only problem is that it takes a lot of self-work, honesty and sacrifice but I'll talk more about that in future entries. Ultimately, my ego wanted to defend all the dogmas I had about personal development and I just wanted to get my point across that television has so much crap content that don't help you to become a better person. I wasn't able to get that point across because I was so busy defending myself from this man's unfair criticisms. The 40-year old also was being very defensive and showed himself to be less mature than I first thought he was. Ignoring all the irrelevant stuff he said in his defense, he seems to the type of person who's so unaware of the workings of his psyche that he worships negative emotions, thinks he can get an accurate picture of reality by watching the news, and thinks he's actually wise because he says so in an internet forum. Based on what I know now from all the time I've spent studying different subjects about reality, we were both very much wrong and very unaware at the time and it ultimately was a waste of time. A lot of the stuff I said during the argument were just knee-jerk self-defense mechanisms and I'm sure a lot of the stuff he said were much of the same thing. So why am I talking about this story? This seems like a petty internet argument, how could this possibly be relevant? Because this encounter still hasn't left my head. Since the argument, the attacks this guy directed to me has been constantly replaying in my head everyday. I know this man is ultimately wrong about what reality is but the insecure part of my mind keeps reminding me that this man is older than me therefore obviously wiser. The whole argument was basically two people yelling to each other about what reality is and what it takes to be able to see reality. This man argued that anyone who does not watch the news is misguided and of course he constantly threw that description at me very unaware of how it was affecting me, I myself didn't know what to say, I yapped a bunch of nonsense because I neglected to think before I wrote. My level of happiness and awareness to reality is very VERY personal to me. I live everyday constantly interested in studying about emotional mastery and conscious awareness. I think this is the reason why I reacted so quickly to his criticisms that I was misguided and miserable. Because as I've mentioned in my intro to this journal, my entire personal development journey was started because I was suffering from existential panic attacks, a combination of a lack of emotional control and a confusion about reality. Over the succeeding months, I've been committed to aiming for what's possible for me in my happiness and awareness levels. So it should make sense now why this internet argument has frequently been replaying in my head everyday because its like the evil force that scares my ego or the false of my identity. But to the aware and truth seeking part of myself, my progress in this aspect of my life has been very slow paced but it's still greater progress than any arrogant man who is frequently getting upset by what he sees in the news will ever hope to achieve. I want to talk a bit more about my views on spirituality before I end this entry. Pretty much every time I sit and meditate, I begin to get glimpses of a completely different reality beyond the perceptions of the mind that might be is possible to get to not only for me but for everyone else in the world. The big problem is (and I'm sure a lot of so-called "spiritual seekers" will know this) that these are ultimately subjective realizations and that they are impossible to convey to other people through communication. At the moment, I still need years more practice if I'm ever going to have effective meditation habits. Today, I got this sense during meditation that I'm only getting a very tiny fraction of what state of reality is possible to experience through spiritual work. I've only been meditating for less than a year after all but I've already realized some pretty freaky stuff that a lot of ordinary people can't even dream of relating to. Even I myself believe that the states of reality that is possible to be in after doing years of spiritual work cannot even be simulated by imagination. But I need a lot of persistence and dedication for finding the truth if I'm ever going to break the boundary of the chaotic mind and live with peace and freedom. This is my ultimate goal in life. P.S. I don't want people to get the impression that I believe my opinions even have a shred of truth to them. I do not want to become like the person I argued with who has delusions that he already thinks he has an accurate model of reality just because he's 40 years old. Which is why I think it's important that you read my signature in this forum which pretty much says that despite all my dedication to merge with reality, I know that I am an unconscious liar by nature. Nothing I say will ever bring anyone closer to reality. If you want to earn wisdom about reality, you need to realize that all external knowledge will ultimately distract you from finding the truth within yourself. Everything other people will tell you about reality especially from crap sources like the news will be lies. Whether conscious or unconscious lies, they're still lies. Don't even believe yourself or rather what your mind has to say. You need to give conscious awareness the power to determine truth.

<--[03-11-16]--> Monkeys Everywhere ARRGH! I keep noticing monkeys everywhere in my college. It's almost unbearable now, although that's an overestimation because I can handle it pretty well. The worst part about it, and this is what gives me a lot of emotional distress, is that I myself am engaging (or at least just involved) in the same chimp behavior. Because I have no choice, either I pretend to be a good student and get to live in a house and have my parents continue feeding me or I just quit the entire academic game altogether. I want to be free of chimps running my life basically. I want to work on getting rid of my chimp nature so I can live the life of a true human being. It's obvious I need a life-changing transition if I'm ever going to get closer to my authentic living. I'm tired of having my parents doing simple work for me in exchange for my freedom to choose a more authentic way of living, I want to live a more mature life. My current plan is just to graduate and get out of the academic game and then figure stuff out from there. The more I think about it, the more I realize I need to come up with a more well-thought of plan. I'm looking back at the past weeks and I feel like I should spend more time learning about the real world. If only I had more time though because all my time was spent on "important" college projects, lectures, and exams. I would also allocate a large chunk of my free time on creative hobbies and a small part on entertainment. The main reason I spend so much time on college work despite hating it is because of stress, fear and anxiety from all sorts of reasons. My consciousness and self-observation work help so much though but I can only be detached for so long. I kind of want to become like Leo who allegedly spends most of his time reading and learning all sorts of concepts about reality and real world dynamics, real world society etc. Starting tomorrow I'm going to make a commitment to studying about real life and personal development concepts daily. I already have spent a lot of my time studying, watching videos and learning about all sorts of personal development concepts and practical knowledge about reality but I've haven't yet made the commitment to do it everyday. I think that's why I keep falling back to the neurotic habits and worrying. I can only allocate a small amount of my time everyday though but I hope whatever I learn with this commitment will accumulate into something great, hopefully.

<--[03-10-16]--> Lower Self vs Damn Bugs Yes today was another day where most of my time was spent in my academic life. If you've followed around my journal, it'd make sense for you to assume that I absolutely despise the academic aspect in my life. Unlike other people, I have no desire to get good grades or study hard for academic reasons because it's ultimately not connected to anything that I feel will fulfill me in life. Anyway, today I found myself thinking a lot about the 'lower self'. My meditation session today was not one of my favorites but it definitely was one of the most emotionally challenging ones. This one was even more difficult than when I decided to do Strong Determination Sitting instead of Zen Meditation that one time. I hated it. Or rather my ego hated it a lot. Anyway, I decided to meditate at a local park under a tree where a lot of bugs are crawling. The reason why this is so difficult for my lower self to do is because it tends to react strongly against insects like most people. I hate it when I'm meditating and some ant or fly is crawling across my skin. The park makes it even worse because there the occasional grass spider decides to explore my flesh. I usually can't tell if it's a fly or spider on my body until I decide to look (even though, I'm not supposed to). If it's a fly, I might compulsively shoo it away. If it's a spider. SHIT SHIT SHIT GET OFF! There were a couple of those incidents during this meditation. The highlight was when a lizard decided to climb up on my lap. I looked down, the lizard startled me, then I startled the lizard as I began to stand up and I ran off about two feet. 5 minutes later I decided I needed to go back to same place to finish the meditation. Why was I scared by a harmless lizard? Well it was really something I least expected, it was just suddenly there. Anyway, that triggered a lot of thoughts about the lower self in the remaining amount of time the meditation played out and also afterwards it. I began to ponder the idea of "Hell on Earth" which is an idea that I got from Leo Gura's explanations on spiritual enlightenment. I began to think about how far away I really am from enlightenment because of how much work I still need to do to tame my lower self. I'm beginning to get a sense that all my suffering really comes from the lower self and that that's where I need to focus my attention towards if I'm to progress in the spiritual awakening stuff. That's all I want to talk about today. Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite, well actually no maybe try to let them do as they please, anything to tame the wild impulsive ego within you.

(•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑

@Soulbass Well thanks, I'll keep that in mind next time something similar might happen.

<--[03-09-16]--> Mundane Day Yes, got through another day without anything seriously bad happening. Regular regular normal day. The meditation session didn't have much interesting stuff come up although that should be expected. I really wish I could get this college stuff done as soon as possible. I would get more time to do self-actualization work. I keep getting distracted by all these projects, lectures and exams that I'm given very little free time to learn the stuff I think would be greatly beneficial to me and would allow me to create more awesome days. Well, at least I did get some knew creative stuff uploaded though. I'll just link to that then I'm going to bed. It's late. First up! New blog post. I made a review of a free indie game I played a few days ago. Pretty okay game but I had a lot to complain about it. Check out the review on the link below. http://extremez7.blogspot.com/2016/03/free-indie-game-review-hyper-flex.html Next, New Song! Haven't uploaded one in a while. I actually had a new one done last week but I didn't think it was good enough to upload. So I just started a new project, now I finished that one and here it is. It's a 180 bpm Happy Hardcore track about fun carnivals and rollercoasters. Here's to hoping I'll have the ability to create more awesome days in the future!

<--[03-08-16]--> Life is okay sometimes Today wasn't so bad, at least relative to what my average day is like. Despite all the stress and lack of free time I have because of college, I actually managed to get myself to be really mindful and not get caught up in all the negative thought processes and imagination. Sometimes when this happens, I feel a sense of weakening of the sense of self. Not a complete removal, just a subtle fading before I go back to another thought process. Although I do wish I had been given more free time today. Most of it was just spent doing more college activities. Still trying to remain conscious through the entire days because it's very easy for me to actually start thinking about stuff about college or just plain get bored and drift into whatever fantasies I have for the future as opposed to making conscious action. I'm currently having a bit of a clearer picture of what I want during my visualization sessions. It's so radically different from my current situation but I actually feel a lot of emotional attraction to it. I'll talk more about this visualization dream I have for myself in the future. Also, I have not forgotten about the blog I started at Blogspot. (extremez7.blogspot.com). I plan to write another blog post tomorrow. I started the blog because I wanted to broaden my horizons on topics I want to talk about. Obviously, I wouldn't want to be talking about video games, music, or just random stuff that's in my head in this self-actualization journal. That's what I want to talk about in the blog.

@Soulbass I still don't know whether I should care about the student who killed himself/herself. What do you think?

<--[03-07-16]--> A FUN TIME IN COLLEGE LAND Monday again. Most of my time was spent in a college that I don't like, listening to lectures I don't care about because the only reason I go there is because this is the life my parents have built for me. Behind closed doors I'm slowly trying to build my skillsets so I can finally start living authentically. Even if I make a shitty living, I should at least have the freedom to choose that living. Right now, I'm unconsciously being quiet around other people about what I actually feel this whole academic game is like. The classmates I meet in this college are some of the most unaware and clueless people I know, just completely oblivious to all the different lies and manipulations other people have bestowed unto them that give them fuel to go through college without questioning it. Oh yes, and there was a report that someone at the college commited suicide recently because of issues in his/her (I don't know the gender) academic life. So that's fun right? Personally, I feel like this shouldn't really matter to me. Honestly, I really cannot decide whether I should or shouldn't feel bad about this. I openly told a fellow classmate that I don't really care about this whole issue so you know what? I'm just going to say "Not my problem. . ." There is a much bigger discussion to be had here about society's blind pressure towards academic excellence and how that's actually breeding a whole generation of clueless robots who have no idea what real learning and much less inner growth is like. But I actually want to leave that for future entries. Still, all these issues still don't distract me from what I'm actually supposed to be doing with my life: Stopping to smell the roses as much as possible. Also I realize I have not been making much entries about my past recently, I'll try to do more of that in future entries.