Paul-from-France

Hello everyone ! The question is simple yet not easy to tackle : How can one trust in the truthfulness of direct experience after realizing that direct experience itself is a subjective paradigm ? How can direct experience be True while being solipsistic ? If you are tempted to respond " you'll know it when you see it." then either I'm not there yet (most likely) or we all need to contemplate again what Truth truly entails. Thank you Paul

David Foster Wallace has reached a tremendous level of understanding of human psychology and chose to share his many glorious discoveries. So the question to us now is simple ; After decades of struggling as a consciousness seeker, mostly successfully, how could David Foster Wallace tie the noose and let go ?

Here's one insight that this thread is helping realizing : while my ego is fond of acting out and talk as if it were yellow, in fact I'm really a stage orange who's too afraid to reach green because of many underlying blue attachments. I have a blue job, a blue family, a blue karate Dojo which Leo's Life purpose course is steadily taking me away from. But for now, green still makes me uncomfortable while Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire feels like home. I systematically sabotage any opportunity to create friendships and especially intimate relationships with green stage people ; my body won't play along. I have to let that part of me die and move on from there. I will. I apologize for that vulnerable oversharing but maybe some of you can relate, I wanted to write that thought down as part of the core concept of 100% commitment. Anyway, thanks to everyone who have answered so far.

Yes Ben Shapiro does consciously mislead people. He is open about the fact that his editorial line follows a conservative point of view and that his opinions are skewed to fit in a right-wing political agenda. So in a sense, yes, he is misleading and his behaviour is indeed the opposite of truth-seeking. That said, one could also argue that it is only natural for stage blue people to gather around their stage blue champions and I don't think that's a horrible situation. What else can be done about those stage blue individuals ? Do we really believe they can be forced into stage orange or green ? That's not going to happen. So it's probably best to leave them be and to understand the speeches of though leaders like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson whose central insight is to focus on personal responsibility, commitment to the realization of our potential and to contribute something of value to the world. We can call that deluded and self-biased ; but to a stage blue person this message feels amazingly positive. Stage blue folks did build this society, as spiritually bankrupt as it is, we could still show some gratefulness and thus add a healthy dose of traditionalism into our own views.

Hello everyone, here's a quick follow up on this thread. After I moved, I ended up finding an amazing Dojo that teaches traditional Karate. I've been taking lessons for a little more than six months now and the practice has been very enriching. I can not encourage you enough to find a powerful Dojo of your own, away from the commercial competitive ones. The ideology there can be a little bit close minded sometimes but the results are here. Best wishes for the new year

Hello everyone ! A happy new year to all of you ! This question is a reaction to Leo's recent post on his vlog about Ben Shapiro, specifically about blue stage people not understanding green stage individuals. Although I'm humbly in line with Leo's remarks on the praised John Lennon's song "Imagine", I wonder what over example could you guys come up with regarding Ben Shapiro's point of view. In fact he seems like a quite educated man and I feel encouraged to go along with most of what he has to say about politics and religiosity. So what would you say are instances of Ben Shapiro failing to understand Truth and the "material" world we appear to be living in ? Is it possible that Green doesn't understand Blue ? looking forward to hearing from you, Paul

a festival of spiral dynamics ; overcoming phobias ; how perception is biased and more practical stuff So the story starts with two drops of red in a sea of orange. I was going home for lunch in a crowded tramway, typical so far, when I suddenly feel like someone might be trying to open the front pocket of my backpack. First time : benefice of the doubt, second time : I move sideways slightly but let's not get paranoid here, third time : I reach for the bag with my hand and felt that the pocket had been opened. I take a look inside, wallet is gone, but then again there's so much useless junk in there so I look again, still no wallet. So it's time to ask around. Sir, have you seen anything ? ...no. Ma'am did you see someone take my wallet ? Oh no no no no ! And so on until the next stop at which point two guys go out of the tramway and right then a herd of at least half of dozen people stormed at me yelling hysterically, pointing fingers, "it was them ! It was those two !! we saw who stole from you ! We saw ! We saw everything but we were so scared !!! " Anyway, what followed that first wave of accusations was an avalanche of name calling and excuses. Classic orange. Beautiful. Also a classic example of group behavior in the sense that everybody wants to call out the robbers but no one will be the first to do so. If one person rises up then the whole tramway rises up. If no one will speak first then everyone chooses to stay quiet. Plus afterwards they were all faking compassion, widely exaggerating how sorry they feel. On the other hand, we have to give some respect to the red behavior here : for having the guts to commit a felony in plain view fully aware of the fact that people will be too scared to mumble any words. Reds aren't stupid at all. When I told that story to a police officer, he had a very blue reaction while the reaction from the insurance company was very green. Both came from a collective ethos : this is about the good of the community. Both expressed disgust towards the egotistical behavior of the passengers. The distinction was subtle and very insightful. The police officer got angry listening to that tale of selfishness, he then went on and on about justice, sticking together, evil happening to good people and how discouraging crime is to productive law-abiding citizens ; choking on words that a representative of the state isn't supposed to utter. On a smoother level, the woman from the insurance company didn't get angry, she was sad. Genuinely so. She ended up talking about togetherness, on the ability to trust one another, the fact that perpetrators are victims of themselves and how the world could be better. It was fun ! A few points outside of spiral dynamics now. You'll tell us how it is in your country but in France : you might feel like you exist, but do you have the papers that prove you indeed exist ? Without an ID card you do not exist. In order to redo your papers you need to go to the city hall but you need your ID card to go into the city hall. I eventually got in and have been told to gather papers that prove that my mother is my mother, papers that prove that I was indeed born at some time. Here's the most hilarious : no wallet means no cash, no credit card and no ticket for the tramway but I still needed to use the tramway to get to work but the inspectors were in so I attempted to communicate human to human with them. Well that was in vain but it was kinda cool to witness : Hi I don't have a ticket because my wallet got stolen earlier. Sir, please present your ticket. I don't have one, my wallet was stolen. Sir, you need to buy a ticket right now. I can't, my wallet has been robbed. Sir, if you can't present a ticket I will have to give you a fine. I can't pay your fine and I need to get to work. Sir, are you able to present the paper that says your wallet got stolen ? This is endless. I walked. Same deal at every grocery store : no wallet no food. Fortunately I have an old checkbook but in order to pay with a check the lovely cashier asks for your ID. Endless I tell you. This is getting very long already, I wanted to get into how I am usually neurotically averse to conversations over the phone but when it came to defending my ego suddenly that phobia had disappeared. Really cool to notice. Similarly, I'm never fully relaxed around authority figures but that day I went into the police station like I absolutely owned the place. That was weird to say the least. Also it's worth pointing out that the two guys were caucasians fake anarchists living off the welfare state but that real fact did not stop a very old man to grab my shoulder to tell me " It was the arabs ! they were arabs ! I saw ! It's always the arabs !!!" No, they weren't. Not that it would matter anyway. How often do we physically see what we subjectively want to see ? How biased does one have to be so that the vision will get literally distorted to create a sight that confirms one's belief ? Fascinating old man. So anyways, I guess a lot of the motivation for that post was just my ego acting like a sad little boy because a big bad bad guy did something unfair. Reality is neither fair nor unfair, it just is. The sermon on the mount was on my mind a lot that day, we can get into that if you want. Thanks for reading and have a great day !

Hi Prabhaker ! Thank you for your answer. Indeed there is no reason to stop something that makes me feel better and better. Could you say a little more about what you mean by awakening the life energy ?

Hi everyone ! According to the philosophy of Kung Fu, the chi is an energy, a life force, that any individual might be able to unleash after years of practice. It is said to grant its users with extraordinary powers such as great strength, longevity and even healing capabilities. In ancient Greece, there was a similar concept called "pneuma" believed to allow those same abilities through a rigorous utilization of breath. However, the scientific community of today considers the practice of Tai Chi to be nothing more than a low impact cardio exercise ; which in itself remains a very helpful habit. In my experience, the practice of Taijiquan can serve as a powerful concentration exercise. It is sometimes referred to as "meditation in motion". The state of mind that is reached through Tai Chi movements feels indeed similar to the one brought by meditation. Though meditation reaches out much deeper (on a good day). So what do you make of it all ? What conclusions did you get to through your practice ? Is "chi" a real force or rather a deep state of concentration ? Thanks a lot for your answers and a good day to you all !

Thanks Henri but enlightenment is not physics. I know it's a dead end street, this is just for the sake of argument. Still we can not deny that, hypothetically, if we had an amazing sense of sight acting in the largest spectrum for example, or even a crazier sixth sense whatever that would be, then there's no way to know what we could find out. Doesn't it sound too easy to say : we can not find ourselves through our senses (nor physics) therefore we must be nothingness ?

Thank you and first of all, let me say that I agree with you both on a philosophical level. I too have read the theory of enlightenment. Indeed we are not sensory phenomenon, as Infinite said. Indeed we do not exist in any way, shape or form, as Donald said. But you both understand that knowing this is not enough at all. We need to discover that empirically. So how can we be certain of the exhaustiveness our empirical examination since we have such poor senses ?

Hi everyone ! While going through the Neti Neti visualization, especially when it comes to the channels smell and taste, it seems rather unsatisfying to basically dismiss those only because we naturally have poor faculties in both smell and taste ; which is also relatively true for all of our senses knowing that none of them are perfect. Leo says this himself : " the channel of taste is very easy because we have such a poor sense of taste ". This is a misinterpretation. Theoretically, we might be capable of smelling something coming from our true self if only we had a much more powerful sense of smell ; and of course this is also true for all the other senses. What do you guys think ?