PepperBlossoms

@SamC If you think about it, men are stronger. A man could more easily crush and kill a woman by over-powering her than the woman could do to the man - so it takes some level of - "hey please don't kill me". She could be terrified of him if he gets angry. She could love him when he is otherwise compatible and things are going well or well enough. Women could provide a whole lot more than just that. Women can be nurturing, smart, gentle, funny, creative, courageous, intelligent, athletic, etc. When you say feminine, what do you mean? Some guys do have higher standards for their women and do care a whole lot about how their partner acts/is - they may tell them what upsets them and want the woman to stop doing xyz because the man doesn't let that slide or like that. Men can have an ambivalence for women too. If you had a partner, there may/will possibly be things that you do and do not like about him/her as with everything. It is not all about looks either. I think regarding inadequate, we kinda tend to go towards a partner that is of the same adequacy as us so that there is no inadequacy feelings (or being out of one's league) or not so much of that otherwise it probably won't work. Question the idea that only women have ambivalence for men and not vice versa. Have a girlfriend for even a week and you will see things that you do and do not like. Interesting. Tell me more about this male perspective... Yeah understanding each other can be helpful.. Um.. not when I am scared - - when I am scared I want to get the heck out and go far away. Regarding essence - I feel like I can't just use one word as there are so many different things I want haha. A jolly essence. But yet that has to be in combination with many other things. It is like how when one has a color, when you put that color next to other colors, it changes how the color is. So if I say jolly, I don't mean in combination with obnoxious/dumb/superficial. Jolly and curious. Thanks. @Leo Gura I think the social calibration preference will also depend on the person. Some girls may lack that as well and be more okay with having a disfunctionally socially calibrated partner. The more socially calibrated someone is, the more they may want their partner to be like that too - based on whatever notion they have of what social calibration is "supposed" to look like. But yeah there may need to be some sort of social calibration to make some sort of connection and have enough communication to understand each other and keep on seeing each other.

@Nahm (just trying to paraphrase what you wrote:) being free (liberated) from - the thought (about) the idea that thoughts are to be sought - noticing that a thought is a doing action - noticing that one can be better at a thought as a doing action - and then one can feel more calmness (equanimity) The better we get at tackling and harnessing our thoughts and awareness with them, the less susceptible we are to crazy, wild, angry, sad reactions to those thoughts (as we are the one (possibly) making the thought and making the reaction to the thought). We can separate ourselves from the thought and look at it distantly as well as get deep in with them and both are cool experiences.

You can still love and cherish your partner even if there are things that you do not like about them and they do not like about you - you will cherish them anyway. You pick someone and make it work for the both of you. The stuff that you don't like about each other will be stuff that you can both use to grow and work on and it keeps it interesting. I think what we want in a partner is also kinda how we want ourselves to be.

Stuff is a mixed bag. There are the good and the bad, pros and cons. (Also I added a few more to my list just now). You are welcome. Everyone has different things that they want in a partner and different things they are okay with and not okay with. I'll ask the same for you: 1: What exactly does a woman provide for you? Why are women so " Awesome"? ( for men) 2: What does make a woman a creep/ scary? ( what invokes fear in men) 3: What is the most important thing a woman can do to not make men feel afraid but safe? ( if you have to go down to one word, to the essence).

1. Knowledge, compassion, friendliness, sex, partner, love, joy, curiosity, adventure, beauty, reliability 2. Aggressive, loud, domineering speaking/tone; too much drinking; not seeing the beauty in life; being overly flirty and overly confident; talking to too many females; having had a history of going from girl to girl to girl to girl pretty quickly; being too egotistical; lack of compassion/joy/love 3. Innovation/compassion/silly/playful/strength

5. Life purpose driven 6. Spiral dynamics and ego development integration 7. Supportive of meditation and mindfulness 8. Likes to discuss illusions, paradoxes, rationality, deception 9. Non-duality is king

Cool stuff! @Mason Riggle @WelcometoReality

Is reality real or imagined? If all of this is real versus if all of this is imagined - does it even matter if it is real or imagined? But what is real to me may be imagined to you such as a difference of opinion, etc. We can say that something was imagined such as when we wake up from a dream but yet - was the dream real so was that real? We can say that we have to imagine that there is a universe but yet, is there a universe? We cannot prove or disprove. If we think it is real, do we take it more seriously and fearfully or act differently than if we think it is imagined which we may then be more playful and distant from the experience? But how can one separate real and imagined in non-duality terms? If I am playing a scary game and am aware that it is just a game, I may not get as scared as I would if I thought it was really happening. When you say imagined, do you mean constructed?

@Nahm Your webpage is really great. Thanks for sharing. So essentially, we can seek to be liberated from believing our thoughts as truth and the better we are at that, the more mental and emotional calmness we may feel. Thank you.

Yeah good point haha. That seems to be the case! No wonder we have a hard time changing our view sometimes because what we see seems to be so and it can be hard to switch to some other view when we feel like we already have the one.

It is whatever it is and we won't be able to tell if its real or imagined so those words then don't matter in that sense.

I was thinking last night after my last post that, yeah if we can't verify if something is real, then real and imaginary are the same thing.

@Nahm Oh interesting. Thanks. What do you mean by end of undesirable rollercoaster (to stop searching for knowledge as it is nothing)? What do you mean by liberation is the stark opposite?

I guess one may not really ever fully verify that anything is real or not real. Real and imagined are like short and tall - the duality where one defines the other. But we can see that stuff appears to be real all the time and then we get more information and then we change our opinion as to what is real and imagined. It is like the notion of real is an opinion, a perspective. Non fiction books and college classes are supposed to be "real" but those are based on opinion. Sure it seems like stuff is happening and we could just say our interpretation of it, or what we see, is based on what we are aware of, how narrow/open-minded we are, what we are seeing. I don't want anyone to hurt themselves or cause harm. There could be imagination happening within a real realm. There could be imagination happening within an imaginary realm. It then doesn't matter whether the realm is real or imaginary as that doesn't really make a difference - - the realm is whatever it is. Imagination could be real. Real is real. But we have to imagine what is real.... "based on my imagination, that could be real or based on my imagination, that could never be real" However.. real and imagination could both change... And what person A sees may not match up with what person B sees. We tend to say that what we see is real and that others have it wrong. We have to imagine what the notion of real and imagination means as well as what reality is. Because we have to imagine that something is real, we can't tell if it is or isn't and it doesn't necessarily matter but may have an impact on how we interact. Wow way to take charge of them aliens. In my last nightmare from a few years ago, I hid and then tried to save my tied up friend from the witch and when there was no other options, I lit the witch on fire and hit it with a baseball bat and then woke up.

@Nahm @AlphaAbundance (I'm trying to see Nahm's view and Alpha's view and came up with this:) Everything is conjecture. We will never have absolute proof or disproof for anything - hence then one could just stop all discussions, questioning, research, etc. as nothing can ever be fully known. So I can see that to say that there are infinite states of consciousness/enlightenment - that there may not be proof or disproof but it is interesting to create models/theories/observations anyway... but yet we may stay stuck in the "mind matrix" but can have the illusion of varying degrees of liberation from it. We can imagine that consciousness could go on for infinity but we can't ever verify that it does.

I remember when I prayed to the god in the clouds everyday and then I felt like I was talking to myself and that religion was all made up. And how I have a dream and then wake up and it was like that was imagined. And how I used to think poor people just wanted handouts and were lazy and that now I think Republicans are narrow minded. It's super interesting to go from one way of thinking and then have it completely changed and there are more things being considered in so many realms whereas previously we had not ever experienced or considered. Then to just look at, well if I was narrow minded there, what else am I being narrow minded about and some of that is based on what we are exposed to as well as what we are able to imagine - - like how people can't imagine that it was possible for the Holocaust or moon landed to have ever happened. It doesn't necessarily have to be helping or promoting any cause but it can be fascinating to explore the mind and illusions. If one doesn't want to explore illusions, they don't have to - but others may do it anyway.

The absolute infinity creates so many possibilities in terms of infinity that yeah I guess imagination just lets infinity go wherever, in any realm, however for all bases. We could still say imagination then isn't necessarily separate from reality but rather increasing infinitely the possibilities of what is instead of a more narrow-minded viewpoint which is relative to what it is compared to. I think people think reality is real (the narrow-minded of what is real) in terms of Christianity as they want to go to Heaven and not Hell, in terms of conforming to social, financial, and ideological norms, in terms of having an emotional reaction to stuff (as narrow minded), in terms of thinking and contemplating deeply about stuff (but possibly in a narrow minded way), in terms of taking pills to avoid pain, etc. Even to wake up from this dream if that was even a thing wouldn't prove or disprove.

I was in one of the most populated cities in my country and I felt anxious - the cars were quite loud from the highway and there were so many cars and so many businesses everywhere and not much in terms of scenic rivers/lakes/parks/open space. It was a jungle of ugly buildings basically everywhere. I then drove home and on the drive the sun was shining and there was open landscape and parts where I drove over water crossings. Then at home it felt quiet and serene. There is less traffic, far less population, less businesses, less crowded. I no longer felt anxious. I felt more calm and more okay. I could think again, I could smile and laugh again. Yes the environment helps to set the context. Police presence can create tension as police have historically killed people as well as locked them up for a really long time or for life. So a lack of police presence can be more calm than a large police presence. When I go to museums and see employees stationed around the place, I feel scared of them as they to me are like an extension of the police, someone there with a watchful eye that may report me if I do something wrong - - even to work in an office building, that too is like a police presence of more people there to watch you. I guess too it is partly all imagined and projected and everyone will see the situation differently. There is definitely a nice middle ground of having some security but not too much and also some freedom but not too much.

The relief can feel so great when we let ourselves free from the burden we were imagining - - but we can also be scared to break everything too much and stepping into the unknown of what exactly that means... Stepping into a universe that lasts forever with no change can feel like horror and so this constant forgetting and constant change can be nice (at least as it is now). When someone says they have mostly scary dreams - - it is crazy in one way as "hey the dream isn't real you don't have to be scared" but yet it feels too real in the moment. And then the fears that we have here - those could be imagined but yet the death of what we are imagining now has so much unknowns and even knows are not actually known.

Finding and discovering those stages can be exciting. I was also thinking that our emotions - like when we are emotionally struggling - - that is us still deep into an illusion about whatever - - We are constantly working to break free of illusions and depending on how we do it, we could get deeper into others. It is hard to tell where one is on the axial consciousness tree but even that is all illusion too. I was noticing that movies and cartoons have us going with the illusion that the characters are who they are acting to be or drawn to be and even the characters themselves sometimes break character and whacky stuff happens or some characters freeze and others don't to show a meta awareness of the show and that it is just a cartoon, just a tv show, whatever.

There is a peacefulness/calmness when one is out of the illusion such as living in the chaos of a dream and then waking up and being initially mad of "hey I was dreaming and want to go back" but then noticing how funny it is how that was just an illusion that it was happening. Or "hey I was angry/sad/happy. I want to go back to feeling that". A break of the illusion can feel like a disruption of the flow, of the status quo, of such a great change that it is hard to adapt to, a large jolt. We react so many different ways to the breaking of illusions or changing from one illusion to another - sad, anger, laughter, meh, curiosity. Nothing to do feels very calm. There is nothing left but whatever illusion we want to create or wherever the illusion we are in - what path that transforms to. The illusions can feel so very real and then the question comes - what is an illusion and what isn't? If everything is an illusion, then that pain I was feeling, or sickness, or the struggle - was it all in my mind? And even so, the dream was in my mind. But then what is my mind is part of the universal mind. I think I am still in the illusion of wanting to chase knowledge, insights, ideas - - but they can come regardless of whether I chase them or not -- and so can other things. I was wondering - if we are part of the universal oneness, but there could be so many rabbit holes to that - - how much do we have on an impact of everything? Yes stuff is being imagined in the mind but can our personality imagine what kind of music is going to be playing and how the characters are acting on the tv - - or is it rather that is what we are noticing things based on what our awareness is and it may have been there otherwise but we are just now aware of it...

Who all considers themselves bohemian? What's your style, stereotype?

If the sustainable type work is very expensive, takes a long time, and requires very high skill, it may not be as sustainable in terms of - it would take too long and too costly to meet the demanding needs of society - - but yet we are not really trying a whole lot as @aurum said so if we required it upfront for building/production requirements, it may have a learning and integration curve but then once that hump is jumped by industry professionals, it may be more attainable and then once done more commonly because it is required, the whole process could get cheaper and be more sought out as it would make a more beautiful product. We have lots of rules for building for safety/structural relations but not a whole lot of rules regarding beauty/sustainability. Regulation for this would get pushback by those that do not want more regulation or pay more money for things. I can see that it may actually NOT be sustainable to spend so much effort on making a few things sustainable at the expense of not having enough time to get that for everything else - - For homes, we have a few very expensive beautiful, sustainable, LEED, solar panel, intelligently designed/crafted homes that the wealthy enjoy and then there is the cheap, quick homes that all look the same that the middle class enjoys. Is there anything wrong with making something that looks like everything else to go for quantity instead of actually taking one's time to do something fascinating and create a very unique product? We will have to make sustainable/beauty extremely affordable otherwise we will probably keep on choosing price over holistic long term impact in terms of capitalism as @Lews Therin said- - unless we factor in more things to the price/long term impact. I guess the builders/designers themselves would have to have a value system of beauty over money. A lot of it also just has to do with - the people working on these projects are young and are still learning but the people they are learning from and being managed by didn't value beauty and so the young aren't learning how to build something in that way and then we get more and more cheap things. And then the young grow up and just keep on doing the same methods they were taught and then teach those methods to the young after them. If we look to other places, castles were beautiful and expensive but it was at the expense of everyone else being dirt poor and in bad living conditions - - so it needs a balance possibly of not spending too much time on one thing and evening out the type of thing and effort put forth to benefit the most people.

Do you value something that focuses on sustainability and beauty (which tends to be upfront more expensive and require unique taylored approaches) or something that is upfront cheaper, covers more people, and more cookie cutter? By tending to put the focus on making things cheap, we are sometimes creating ugly products/cities/homes but yet they are affordable, more people can use them, it requires less skill to make, and it is quicker. To go with beauty and sustainability, it takes longer. It can be more inspiring, creative, lovely, intelligent, etc. though. When we are creating without concern for the aesthetics or psychological, social, environmental impact - - hence we have lots of carbon in the air, homes on top of each other, high crime, poor quality things, flooding, etc. Would you rather leave your mark on adding to the beauty or would you rather leave your mark on trying to help the most people and hence do something that is accessible to the most people, most likely very utilitarian - but possibly not beautiful/sustainable in the long run? What to you is more enjoyable, purposeful? I can see the benefits and value to both. I can see that we would want to be able to integrate both as much as we can - and that if there is no consideration at all for one, it can be an issue. Some beauty is great but it is only so beautiful based on the cost that may make it ugly in terms of being out of price range - - but some stuff may be so ugly that it is too costly for the impact it is going to have.

So here are some funny, selfish thoughts I have had during/at the beginning/at the end of trips: -You are so special to be getting this information. Most people do not have it. -You are a volunteer going into this trip on behalf of consciousness to explore consciousness (yourself) -Don't tell the others as this information is an advantage. Knowledge is power. -You can see what everyone else cannot see - that climate change/poverty/etc. is all a game and so is the money game, the social game, the family game, etc. Shhh you must not speak about these games we have constructed out loud or the normies will hear you. -Universal consciousness is speaking to me.