aurum

Would that not imply though that we have the wisdom to not cause our own extinction?

I agree with your point this is going to take a long time and we shouldn't have unreasonable conversations. This is a good conversation, and I think we're going to the heart of the matter. Is institutional philanthropy fundamentally broken and beyond repair? Or can it be reformed? I do believe it can be reformed. As an example, someone like Daisee Francour is doing important work in this area. I'd refer you to a snapshot of her perspective here: https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/indigenizing-philanthropy Indeed, if we as individuals are capable of generosity and giving, then there appears to me no reason why this giving could not theoretically be institutionalized. I don't intend to downplay whatever accomplishments NGOs and philanthropists have made, my intention is to call attention to where it is not succeeding and why.

I feel the spirit of philanthropy and what it is supposed to represent is entirely correct. The spirit of philanthropy says, "I will give because I have more than I need. I do not expect anything in return for this. I do this because I am generosity and see others pain as my own". That is the kind of mindset we need more of. My critique is of the way philanthropy is used in practice. Even NGOs often make problems worse. Or have an incentive to keep the problem going so they can continue being its champion. So in practice, I see very little if any positive change being made by philanthropists. While certain individuals may have won short term gains, collectively over the long term it has been a failure. For instance, the numbers seem to show that poverty has actually risen over the years. While this is obviously a complex problem, it seems clear to me that an exploitation / philanthropy model is inherently incapable of making these changes. If I steal $100 from you and then give you back $30 so that I seem like a nice guy, is this really defensible behavior? Is that really "giving"? Admittedly I am simplifying the problem with the above example, but that is the essence of what is going on.

Giving away almost all his fortune? He still is worth over a hundred billion dollars. That is more than the annual GDP of many countries. And it has mostly only increased over time. Some how I expect he will continue to do quite well financially in the future. I'd argue that ignores that philanthropy has been used since the beginning as a tax haven for the rich. And a way to keep the pyramid structure of our society intact. Many of those developmental problems would likely not exist if it weren't for years of exploitation already. I agree. That's the tricky thing about systems. What could Bill Gates reasonably do? The answer is not much. Just as our system generates poverty, it also generates mega-wealthy like Gates. If not him, it's somebody else. This is why I don't think he's evil or even consciously looking to do harm. I'm sure he has genuine concern about many global issues. He just doesn't know how to solve them. And when he does try to solve them, it usually involves him using his fortune in a undemocratic, unilateral way to shape the lives of everyone. That kind of power should only be had by a representative government. Or some sort of direct democracy. Otherwise we might as well hang up democracy and say that we live in a oligarchy.

@Gili Trawangan This is really cool. My only critique is that I think it would pop a lot more if the drums were stronger. They feel kind of weak to me. The beat itself is cool, but it's hard to vibe to because the drums don't really "punch" for me. Otherwise, I like it. Vocals are great. And I like that you used more of a hip hop beat instead of a standard rock beat, makes it interesting. Cool stuff man! I don't know anything about this world but it looks awesome. And thanks for the feedback everybody.

Relevant: I don't think Bill Gates is evil. But I certainly don't see him as some savior either. People are fooled into thinking that because he gave some money away he must automatically be a good guy. But of course it's not that simple.

I'd say that's it. It's a good lesson for everyone here. Most of us are probably moving way too fast. When the mind slows down and a person adopts a healthier lifestyle, they slow down in general. Less anxiety and need to speed things up or fidget. Grounded.

@Anton Rogachevski The problem with shitting on PC culture or SJWs is that most people have never bothered to integrate their POV. Like sure, we can talk about where SJWs have got it wrong and unhealthy manifestations of Green consciousness. But have you actually read someone like Angela Davis? Or studied the history of colonization? Or seriously listened to BIPOC and LGBTQ people about their struggles? It's very rare. In other words, many people criticizing SJWs have no idea what social justice is all about and why it exists in the first place. It's stage Orange failing to understand Green and then laughing at it.

@How to be wise I have a bit of a different perspective on this. Racism in many ways is about survival. For centuries, white people have been exploiting people of color through colonization and slavery. And more recently with global debt, the war on drugs, prison labor, etc. Now, if I was going to exploit a group of people, I would need a narrative to justify this. Perhaps the people I am exploiting are savages that need to be civilized. Or they are violent and lawless. Or perhaps our race is just superior to their. Either way, I now have a solid narrative on which to rationalize my behavior. Which is the whole point. Not truth. Of course, any good rationalization can cherry pick evidence in order to support the narrative. So maybe there are instances where POC act that way. But because this is about survival and not about truth, you're not going to think very hard about why POC might be acting that way and how even my own actions may be affecting that. This is part of my problem with spiral dynamics in general. I do believe in cognitive development, but it seems at times to paint this picture that each nation is just evolving independently of each other. If one country is highly undeveloped, it has nothing to do with what developed nations are doing. It has nothing to do with how developed nations may actually be causing undeveloped nations to struggle. It doesn't seem to account for centuries of imperialism and exploitation.

Enter Sandman + about a million others. Yeah that was the album that changed Metallica. From thrash to more just heavy pop rock. Interesting to think about what are the systemic causes of musicians “selling out” like that. Which is not to say Enter Sandman isn’t a fun song or there’s anything wrong with pop. But there definitely can a sacrifice of uniqueness in order to appeal to mass markets.

Here's an EDM song I made a while back. I usually write more acoustic music, but someone wanted me to produce a song for them and I ended up with this.

Good stuff man. I like the guitar loop and what I think was either a harmonica or an accordion. Your album artwork is also really cool, did you draw that yourself? As far as critical feedback, I would have mixed your vocals louder. They get drowned out at certain points, especially when you went heavy on the reverb. It also sounded like there may have been some mistakes you made on the guitar at around 2mins, but maybe that was intentional, I'm not sure .

The Addiction Formula is the Hero's Journey translated into songwriting. The basic idea is that you start your song with low energy (Ordinary World) and amp up the energy over time, eventually leading to your big climax (final Chorus) and outro (Hero returns home). This is basically the formula every hit song has followed ever. In terms of real simple song structure, it looks like this: Intro -> Verse -> Chorus -> Verse 2 -> Chorus 2 -> Bridge -> Final Chorus -> Outro Which each part gaining in energy, i.e verse 2 having more energy than verse 1, Chorus having more energy than verse 1 or verse 2. And the final chorus having the most energy of the whole song. It is useful if you're new to songwriting. This at least gives you a framework to start with as opposed to being paralyzed with infinite opportunities. But of course, like any good artist, you also want to break the rules. Don't get trapped in it or start thinking you *must* write this way.

@tuckerwphotography That lines up with my experience as well. All of my new age hippy friends want to talk about "divine masculine" and "divine feminine". They're very open to the idea that men and women are different, without it feeling repressive. In fact it feels more like embracing who we actually are. It is ironic, although perhaps not surprising, that mainstream feminism seems to express stage Orange values. An empowered woman is essentially seen as a woman that has embraced her masculine, i.e career, individualism, leadership, assertiveness, etc. Actual feminine values, such as nurturing and surrender, are rarely held up as ideal feminist examples. The move towards stage Orange feminism is an obvious swing of the pendulum swing from repressive stage Blue & Red societies where women did not have autonomy and were male property. The next step for feminism will be to integrate. And I think we're starting to see pockets of that happening in stage Green gatherings like you talked about.

@roopepa Of course there's negative entities. They're still all figments of God's imagination. But God can imagine some pretty wild shit . I wouldn't get hung up on it. Stick with your spiritual practice, learn how to control your energy and you'll be fine.

This whole podcast and Barstool in general is solid Orange:

Nahko is Green. Except for when he gets in trouble with women.

This girl also feels really Green to me:

Kamea Chayne is peak Green with a mix of some Tier 2 consciousness. Her podcast is literally called "Green Dreamer" .

I agree with your basic premise. It also depends on how you define addiction. I see addiction as a bottomless attempt to meet a need through a means which is not working. For instance, if I lack a sense of belonging in my life, and I attempt to meet that need with shopping, my quest will be endless. You are not really meeting the need. Supernormal stimuli tends to create this effect. I think I want the fast food from McDonalds because it's loaded with salt, sugar and fat, but in reality it is lacking in substance to what I desire. Sex, especially casual sex, can potentially fall in this trap. To put it more simply, you can't get enough of something you don't want. Hence, destructive addiction. Agreed. If we pile more shame on top of our addictions, then we just push it further into the shadow / unconscious. That's awesome. And it's good to see you around the forum. I'm enjoying your content.

@Dany Balan It’s a bit of both in my experience. Yes, power draws out devils who are seeking power over others. And it often flows to people who are power hungry and willing to do the devilish thing to get it, which means devils are often likely to be in power. But also, @Parththakkar12 is right in saying that maintaining your integrity in a position of power can be extremely challenging, even if you have good intentions. Often times you can just get swept up in corrupt institutions and systems. You may even really believe you are doing the right thing and have people around you who believe the same. That’s what makes corruption so tricky. It’s not as obvious as finding the “bad guy”, the cartoon super villain who wants to rule the world. Often times that “bad guy” could be a “good guy” in many other ways! It could even be you. Do you think you don’t participate in exploitation and corruption? Of course you do. But you may not realize it. And you will think yourself as one of the “good” ones. And why wouldn’t you think of yourself that way? Probably most of the time you live a normal life. You have people you care about. Generally speaking you try to do the right thing. And of course, the more we think of ourselves as “good”, the better it is for us. If all the devils were aware of how they were being a devil, there be no devils.

This thread is pretty old. I don’t practice sungazing consistently anymore. But when I did, I usually did it during sunset. Sunrise was too early. And you don’t need to do sunset and sunrise, just one or the other.

*Warning, sungazing can be potentially dangerous for your eyes. Use all described safety precautions* What is Sungazing? ~18 months ago, I came across this practice called sungazing. Some of you may have heard of it, but for those of you who haven't, let me explain what it is. Sungazing is an ancient practice that recently started getting popularity due to the work of a guy named Hira Ratan Manek (HRM). The idea is simple: all things are energy, and we can absorb the energy from the sun through looking at with our eyes. Specifically, here is the practice HRM recommends: Wait until what photographers call the "golden hour", which is one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset. This is to prevent damage to your eyes, so take this seriously! Stand with bare feet on bare earth (sand, soil) and simply look at the sun. On the first day, look at the sun for only 10 seconds. Everyday afterwards, increase the time you look at the sun by 10 seconds until you get to 44 minutes. If you did this everyday, it would take you 9 months to get there. Once you get to 44 minutes, stop. For the next year continue to gaze 15 minutes a day, or just walk on bare earth with the sun on you. Say goodbye to sungazing, you're finished Here is a video of HRM explaining the practice in more detail: My Sungazing Journey I had never heard anyone recommend sungazing before, so I was intrigued. Old beliefs like "staring at the sun will damage your eyes!" came up, but I decided to let that go. It seemed incredibly simple and the claimed benefits were pretty wild. Some of these benefits included: Mental, physical and emotional healing Spiritual development Improved eyesight Reduction or complete elimination for the need to eat food More energy, less need for sleep. Since I just finished my initial 44 minutes, I'm going to go through each one of these benefits and explain what my experience was. Claim: Mental, physical and emotional healing Result: I've definitely noticed a change for the better in all of these areas. It was very common that after a long sungazing session, I would find myself having an emotional release. However, I think HRM's claim that sungazing will fix all your physical and mental problems is a bit exaggerated. Claim: Spiritual development Result: Positive. To me, spirituality and well-being are one in the same. So since I saw an improvement in my emotional and physical health, I'd definitely say there were spiritual benefits. I also became much more interested in nature during this time. Claim: Improved eyesight Result: I have pretty bad myopia, and I can't say sungazing improved my eyesight at all. However, it also didn't destroy my eyes as most people would assume. Claim: Reduction or complete elimination for the need to eat food Result: I also can't say I noticed any difference here as well. Another claim that may be exaggerated Claim: More energy, less need for sleep Result: I do feel like I have more energy overall. Sometimes after a session I would feel particularly "plugged in" so to speak. I also noticed that when I started a session, I would usually start yawning. Yawning is a classic sign of an energetic release and sudden upshift in your vibration. However, I still sleep the same amount as before. Overall, I think sungazing is a beneficial practice. It takes little to no effort to go outside and look at the sun, and you will see improvements. However, my results could be biased. I also do a lot of other spiritual practices. So it's hard to isolate sungazing as the cause of some of the benefits I've seen over the last 18 months. For that reason, I think it would be awesome if more people on this forum would be willing to give it a try and post their experiences. Sungazing has the potential to help a lot of people but there's little to no mainstream scientific research on this stuff. So this could be like an underground group experiment. Who needs grant money? TL DR; Sungazing works, but potentially not as well as some people claim. More people should try it!

Totally, I see that in some of my new age friends as well. Seems like you and I always end up talking about Green traps, we must both be spending too much time around greenies Some people do regress down the spiral. And that is concerning since I also see Charles as one of the most important voices out there for social change. My perspective is that he is still solidly in Yellow. He has been doing this for years and years and has consistently demonstrated that integrated awareness over time. If he did legitimately backslide, I’d be pretty shocked.

I just looked over his QAnon essay and I can see what you mean. He definitely went hard on the “it’s the system” side of the argument. Obviously systems do matter. Someone who is unaware of the systemic view is going to be helplessly lost. And we don’t want to fall into the trap of blaming individuals for obvious collective failures. That would almost be the moral or psychological development equivalent of the “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” argument conservatives make. In other words, Charles is arguing that our systems generated the alienation and ignorance that then lead to alt-right conspiracies and Trumpism. However, I think you are also right that it’s not that simple. Even systemic thinking is just a lens, and we have to know when to put it down. Just viewing everything through “the system” may leave important things out. Which, ironically, tends to be something Charles is very good at noticing. He often calls out our tendency for reductionism and simplification of our problems, and yet talking about “the system” could fall into the same trap. It may be that some people are just not ready for love and harmony. It doesn’t serve their spiritual journey at this point. They still have lessons to integrate. If we try and push people too far too fast, that could really be our own agenda sneaking in the backdoor. An agenda that wants them to be the way we want them to be. That would definitely be a potential Green trap.