aurum

I'm actually more optimistic. Mainly because either we do that OR we are heading for total societal collapse. There really is no middle ground. The current systems are completely unsustainable. Already we are seeing big pushes for Universal Basic Income and Universal Basic Services. These are not fringe ideas anymore, Andrew Yang damn near became the democratic nominee with UBI as his platform. Of course UBI / UBS is not enough. But it shows that we are starting to think differently, and that's what is most important. The scarcity of modern society is fake. We just need to change our thinking.

I'd start with loving that For me, the right music and nature are two of the things that really help bring me into a loving vibe. It's not permanent but it happens a whole lot more than it used to. And a whole lot deeper. You could also just fake it. Scream, punch your pillow, make yourself cry, fake laugh. Might be a good stepping stone. Also, if you have loving / emotional people in your life, I find they are often a catalyst for you to then open up. At the end of the day, I find love is more a natural consequence of spiritual growth. So whatever your practice is, stay on it.

No, a large percentage of people feel that way. Including basically everyone on this forum. And even your ruthless Orange friends would likely say the same if they had a little bit more awareness.

It was a lot harder than I ever imagined, but it's also been more rewarding. I think over time it can get easier. After a while you've released a lot of trauma and transcended a lot of your conditioning. You start to hit compounding rewards. In my experience that's when it gets really fun At the same time, it's not a linear process. You might be flying high for a while and then crash into a new trauma out of no where. Important thing is just to stay present with whatever is arising.

Marx was one of my favorites in college. He made some excellent critiques of capitalism and industrial society, although I believe there's better more modern analysis to be had.

@Lews Therin That's the power of the system. The system doesn't maintain itself because it's easy to jailbreak out of and disrupt. It maintains itself because it's the exact opposite. Incentives point towards maintaining homeostasis. Practically this might look like a wide-eyed Greenie who wants to save the world, but ends up working in finance because shit, life is expensive. Rent, maybe a family, student loan debt, etc. You can't really blame them. Those are the incentives that are laid out. Same thing happen with a lot of hippies in the 60s/ 70s. The incentives of the system yanked them back in. It's similar to having an ego-backlash when you think about it.

It'll be unique for each person. But you can bet that they've done a lot of spiritual work and pulling off the layers of societal conditioning.

There's plenty. But if you're doing the spiritual work, you're likely going to figure out very quick that success and riches do not necessarily constitute the glory days. They are not necessarily even a sign of maturity. You may want to reconsider your marker for success.

Yes. Because wage slavery is a symptom of unconsciousness and our broken systems. A conscious society could not have wage slavery. So if you feel your purpose is to raise the consciousness of the planet, which is likely everyone on this forum, then you're contributing to ending wage slavery. If you specifically want to tackle wage slavery as a life purpose, perhaps consider a career in economics / government. Up to you how you want to manifest your contribution.

That's awesome, Charles was a big part of me getting into this kind of thinking. Reading Sacred Economics from a perspective of someone who formally studied economics was transformative. I also really liked this panel, all excellent communicators and deep thinkers. Very interesting that Jordan mentioned an economic crash, e.g hyperinflation, would be a god-send right now. COVID may be helping fulfill that exact role. Right now the Federal Reserve is buying huge amounts of corporate bonds and it only seems to be buying more, not slowing down. Basically our economy is only hanging on to the degree it is because of massive government intervention. COVID exacerbated and exposed huge problems we already had. So question is, will that invention even continue to work? I was also glad to hear them mention UBI. I think it's inevitable that some form of a UBI or UBS is going to be necessary. The problem is, UBI is a complete system disrupt-er. It's a massive step forward to eliminating the artificial scarcity of society, but the system that runs on artificial scarcity can't allow that. The Republicans are actually right in that regard, it would cause a lot of people to stop "working". What they don't understand is that is exactly what we need. I haven't but I'll check it out. My thoughts are that we are moving towards more of a worker-coop model for businesses. Less hierarchy, less centralization, less command and control and more general equality. Sounds very Green to me. I haven't read her book but my initial thoughts are that Doughnut Economics is more of a subset of RBE. In other words, a resource-based economy will have "doughnut" characteristics, i.e circularity, but also many other characteristics. Circularity is just one feature of many important features. If you know more about it I'd love to hear.

What I found most interesting about this was that they seem to have co-opted classic leftist talking points. Usually if you started talking about the failures of the system and institutions, you were a weed smoking hippie with long hair and who complained about “the man”. It was the political right that was generally proud of how things were and wanted to preserve it. This of course could be some deep self-deception, i.e talk about how you’re against the establishment in order to assuage yourself of how you really do represent the establishment. Trump does this all the time. But I wonder if it’s deeper than that. Perhaps on some unconscious level, even these people recognize that the game of modern society cannot go on like this. Perhaps they don’t know how to express it properly but it’s still there. The intuitive knowledge that the game of endless consumerism and economic growth is up. The game of control, fear and domination of each other and nature is up. And of course, the ultimate game of believing yourself to be an individual ego, is up. It seems almost impossible to me that someone could be alive at this time and not feel that we are at a major transition point.

Really excellent. The deep systems thinking he goes into feels very Yellow to me. Reminds me a lot of Charles Eisenstein, who I'm guessing you already know: https://charleseisenstein.org/ On paper I'm mostly interested in degrowth economics. I already have a Masters degree in general economics so it feels like a natural transition. But of course this goes way beyond economics. We are talking about a whole new world, one that is going to revolutionize spirituality, medicine, child care, sexuality, technology, agriculture, etc. And I find anything that hints at this new world really catches my eye.

Leo's content came into my life the exact same time I was finding out about spirituality. He was just starting to post content on enlightenment. No coincidences.

@Focus Shift Definitely some combo of orange / blue / red.

Fascinating. I’ve been practicing fasting for several years and I know Ray Maor. I’ve done 11 days with just water as well as many other fasts. But I’ve never gotten to a point where I could switch like that, I’ve always felt like I had to go back to eating. Right now I mostly do one meal a day. Curious, what how often do you eat and what do you eat these days? And how would describe the difference between fasting and pranic intake?

@Spiral Wizard If you want to attract conscious people, first thing I would do is focus on raising your own consciousness. From a law of attraction perspective, people on the same wavelength are bound to meet. And I've found that to be true in my experience. Even if there's only one conscious person in a group of ten, I will somehow end up talking to that person. More practically, just start going to places where people you want to meet hang out. It's usually not that hard to find the places / events. Instagram is your friend when it comes to this. Go there regularly so people recognize your face even if you don't actually meet. Once you're there, make friends with everyone. Social circles have a exponential effect, meaning one friend could lead you to meeting 10 more. And each of those 10 could lead you to meeting 10 more. After that, if you want to become some sort of host / organizer / leader you can certainly do that. It may help. But I wouldn't consider it necessary.

Hi Monini, welcome to the forum. I have noticed a bit of change regrading sexual attraction. My pet theory at this point is that when we are more unconscious, our sexual energy tends to get stuck in our lower chakras. So we may feel what seems like a lot of sexual attraction, but really it's more about that energy needing to move. As we become more conscious and our chakras open, the sexual energy flows more freely through our whole being. It's not getting stuck or being projected externally. So we can of course still experience sexual arousal, but it has a different quality to it. It's more "whole-body". And the attraction we feel is more genuine compared to just needing to move some stuck energy.

You are certainly free to make as much money as you'd like. My intention is not to tell you to NOT do that. As I said in another post, I don't know you or your situation or what your needs are.

I appreciate that. And I appreciate the level of nuanced thinking you're bringing to this dialogue as well, I'm enjoying it. Let's see if we can go deeper. I would argue that it's not just that there's more to life than material pleasure. I think most people would agree to that. But there still seems to be this assumption that we actually desire a lot of the material things our Orange society has told us are the good life. For instance, let's look at buying a house. Is it that we should want to buy the house and we just need to learn that it won't make us happy? Or is something lost in the mere act of purchasing a house? Perhaps we lose the joy of actually building your own shelter and working with your hands. Perhaps we lose community since traditionally houses would be build communally, which is now outsourced to a construction company. And I'm not saying to not buy a house. I certainly have no idea how to build a realistic shelter so I will be continuing to purchase that commodity. I'm making the point that purchasing items themselves can actually backfire to when it comes to what we really want. Consider if I make you a home made gift with my own creativity, talent and love. That care is going to shine through in the gift. But if I just purchase you a gift and put no uniqueness or creativity into it, something is lost. It's not the same. But this is what our consumer culture encourages because it drives the economy. Even these goals I would argue are more of a result of our stage Orange society than an actual reality. For instance, consider the neighborhood of Vauban in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauban,_Freiburg Here, everything is built within walking distance. As such, people don't need cars. What good is a car when everything you need is right in front of you? It has no value. So do we still need to appreciate the "material pleasures" of a car? Consider having $10M. If you lived in an indigenous culture or somewhere that thrived on gift economy, your $10M is worthless. These things only have relative value because of the circumstances we currently find ourselves in. As long as we live in the modern world, a car or $10M may have relative value. I'm not arguing against that. It's clear that to an extent it does. I'm saying, what if things changed? What if we developed an economic system that wasn't so dependent on purchasing (i.e transactions) and more dependent on gift, sharing and relationship? Would it make the world a more beautiful place? I think it would. In our modern society yes, but freedom to do what? To passively consume? To destroy the environment? What are we doing with this freedom? Because money is not the source of freedom. Money is a web of social agreements we've all made with each others. If there's freedom, it's because we created it. And I respect that. Don't take anything I'm saying as me arguing you shouldn't continue that path. I don't know you and I don't know what your financial situation is or what your goals might be. I believe you have good intentions. My point is I believe there is a far more nuanced conversation we should be having around money / economics. And you won't find it in most self-help books because most self-help books are designed to help people get what they want, not challenge our collective systems.

Actually, it is complicated. Wealth in our current economic system is not generated independently from community and others in the world. The way things currently work is that more for me usually equals less for you. Or alternatively, more for me equals greater ecological destruction and taking of wealth from future generations. I think this is why Green becomes all about sharing. When we focus on sharing, then there's plenty for everyone. We are no longer trapped in a zero-sum game. But this may require a reduction in individual wealth. Green is okay with this because it is collective thinking, not individualistic. Additionally, excess commodification and purchasing power destroys communal ties. Communities rely on being able to help each, but when everything becomes a commodity that can be purchased, you lose real relationship with the people around you. Hence, a lot of the great loneliness of modern society. This is exactly what I'm questioning. In order to deny something to myself, I have to first desire it. But what if I had no desire for certain materialistic pleasures? Then it's not denial. Like I said above, it becomes a conscious choice, which is much different. I think the great facade and doublethink of our stage Orange society is that what we have is abundance. I see that we are in deep scarcity, only we don't even recognize it. Big buildings, yachts and planes are not real wealth. Or perhaps a more generous phrasing would be that they are poor substitutes for the wealth we have lost.

I agree, we are obviously not ready for such an enlightened presidential debate just yet. The good that is coming out of this is that we are being shown with great clarity how poor our current way of doing things is.

This is a common critique I hear but I actually have a different perspective on it. I've met quite a few spiritual who live very meager financial lives. Some even don't use money at all, they buck the entire system. And I've had to consider why that is. The classic retort would be something similar to what you said, which is that they have some form of limiting beliefs about money/receiving. You especially see this in law of attraction / new age communities where it's all about "manifesting abundance". And perhaps that is sometimes the case. But I've also had to acknowledge that this explanation does not account for many of the people I've met. What I've found is that at stage Green, there is a transition to a "less is more" type of thinking. In essence, a lot of spiritual people who have passed through Green have made a conscious choice to live with less wealth. From Orange that seems crazy. Live with less money? But from Green+ it makes perfect sense. I think people are right to be skeptical of our current economic system and the way we use money. It's not just limiting beliefs. There's a real critique to be had that goes beyond platitudes of "make money but be sure to enjoy it!!". Anyway, this is my perspective. Curious what you think.

This whole thing reinforced my belief that we should do away with "debates" and replace them with something else entirely. The very idea of "debating" is very Orange, with assumptions of objective facts and rational inquiry as the method to get to the bottom of them. Call me naive, but it would be amazing to turn on the TV and just see actual dialogue and conversation between candidates. No one attacking or defending, instead just sharing their beliefs and perspective. That in my mind would be how a Green presidential election would look.

I hope not, that sounds rather dogmatic.

@EternalForest I think what you're talking about could be valuable. My only concern with this is that it becomes a slippery slope for unconsciousness. Easy rationalization for the ego. "Yeah I'm working so hard on my enlightenment, this fifth episode of Tiger King is amazing". If you just want to be entertained that's fine. But know when you're doing it. Know when you're just mindlessly entertaining yourself and when you're doing serious inquiry. My suggestion would be that if you're going to do this, make sure you are really consciously deciding what information you are consuming. I'd also set a limit for how long you are planning to do this, e.g one 30-minute TV show.