r0ckyreed

Awesome! I found the solution to my issue. I need to be out in nature more. I notice that I am in a more contemplative state in nature than I am indoors. I am connected more to my existence, which is true and makes sense. The issue is that the mind makes excuses for not going outside such as Covid, bugs, fears, bad weather, etc. But overcoming and observing the minds rationalization is a good spiritual practice that can lead into the insights and the mechanisms of mind that keep the cycle of addiction going. The key is not to abstain totally from technology as it’s not really possible in our world, but to be a conscious user of it as always. At least this is what I have found this far in my contemplation.

Oh wow nice. Good luck on retreat mate.

Thank you!

Hello. I am really getting interested in exploring Stoic thought. Currently, I am reading Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins, but after I finish that book, I plan on exploring Stoicism more. What Stoic Books do you recommend? What translation or versions do you recommend? I plan on reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations next; however, I am not sure which version/translation to get or which is the “best.” I would appreciate any recommendations. Thank you!

@kinesin wow thank you so much! I will read Epictetus, Zeno, Seneca, etc. before I read Aurelius. I Appreciate your insights and inputs! Thank you for the resources! Does the translations of what I read from Epictetus, Seneca, etc. really matter or make that much of a difference? There are so many translations, and it is kind of overwhelming to feel pressured to find the “right” one because I don’t have time to read all translations of a single book. Thank you from bottom of my heart! I will get going on Epictetus now! <3

I have read 3 of Jed Mckenna's books: Damnedest, Incorrect Enlightenment, and Theory of Everything. The last book to read of his is Spiritual Warfare. My impression of what I read from McKenna so far is that he misunderstands the importance of meditation. He gives an analogy or an example to highlight how mundane meditation is. He says something along the lines of "each day you fail to arrive at the truth, you will cut off an ounce of your body. If you take this exercise seriously, you would drop meditation." Those aren't his exact words, but I think they capture his idea in that Spiritual Autolysis, taking the First Step, and finding out truth by negating all that is false is all that matters. I, however, disagree. In my experience, meditation has not revealed truth to me, but it has helped me gain more control over my mind and emotions. In other words, meditation has allowed me to think more clearly and not be so sensitive and reactive to life. Meditation is the ultimate tool for equanimity and being calm in the storm of adversity. Spiritual Autolysis (SA) is basically contemplation with a journal. But doing SA alone may get one to truth, but it won't necessarily liberate one from the forces of their mind. Meditation is mental freedom to me. When we can sit down and shut up and be with ourselves in stillness no matter what is going on, we have developed ourselves. I guess Jed McKenna kind of contradicts himself. He says that meditation is useless, but yet he tell Jolene at the end of Incorrect Enlightenment for her to observe her feelings. He says it is easy to observe ourselves when sky's are clear, but it is more difficult to observe our feelings when "clouds are black." In addition, I interpreted Jed Mckenna's saying of "Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what is true" as meditation. In meditation, we sit down and shut up and then we inquire in our meditation after a period of stillness and then sit back into stillness for answers. So I think Jed McKenna is advocating for meditation without even knowing it while also criticizing meditation. I think he might just be criticizing meditative traditions and not the quality of mindfulness itself. Ultimately my main takeaways from Jed's work is to think for yourself, be your own teacher, learn from others' blunders, and that Enlightenment is not about peace or freedom, but it is about Truth by cutting through Maya's Bullshit Palace of Delusion. Freedom and peace are not the goals of Enlightenment because Enlightenment is the death of ego, which is something that the ego does not want to do. The process of SA or the process of waking up is a literal Hell for the ego based off of my understandings of the readings. But it is important now for me to take action and do the work of meditation and SA. Just reading book after book and not taking action is being asleep in the dreamstate. This is my analysis from what I read from Jed Mckenna's work. I have not read Book 3: Warfare yet so my analysis is limited as always. Please let me know your thoughts, especially if you read Jed's books.

Thank you! You just gave me more inspiration to do meditation! Thank you! Much love indeed! Thank you! And thank you all for your responses! Lol! I thought he was related to Terence at first lol! I initially thought I was reading Terence’s books, but I realized it was Jed’s lol

Okay thank you! That’s kind of what I got from it. In my own experience, I have gained more insight through contemplation than through meditation. Thank you for clarification!

I took the pfizer and so did my family. In my experience, I experienced no side effects, but others experiences are that the first dose is easy, but the second dose is the one to look out for.

Thank you all! I realized the solution: Deep Work is not about workaholism, it is about the Mastery Mindset. "Excellence is not an act, but a habit." --Aristotle. It is important for me to work on developing routines and habits for Mastery, but integrate play into it to enjoy the plateau of life. I need to train my mind despite its resistances to develop the habits I want to. I will have my periods of Deep Work scheduled as well as my days of play. I realize now that if I want to commit to Mastery, I need deliberate practice. This does not mean I become a Christopher Robin, but that I become a Mike Wazowski where there can be a combination of both Deep work and play. Or as Alan Watts says make work your play. The divisions between work and play are what make us suffer. The challenge is to view my work as play, but I believe I can do it. Self-care is also something I need to strategize into my schedule, which self-care is basically an adult's form of play lol! Thank you all for your insightful comments thus far! They helped me gain more clarity. Thank you!

Hello! I read Deep Work by Cal Newport over Winter after finishing Life Purpose Course. I have been struggling with Deep Work in part with the conflicting messages I have received as well as the conflicting parts in myself. A part of me wants to be "productive" but a part of me wants to play and enjoy life. I realized the importance of play after watching the movie Christopher Robin. In this movie, Christopher Robin is a man who lost touch with his childhood and the enjoyment of life and became indoctrinated into the workaholism and productivity of society. When Pooh comes along, he reminds Christopher to appreciate the small things and to play with life and his family, to enjoy life rather than taking his work too seriously. This has been my struggle with the concept of Deep Work is that I value being immersed into my work, but I do not want to become a workaholic. I wish Cal Newport would have went over the trap of workaholism in his book and I wish he could have explored playfulness. I guess it is a balancing game between Deep Work and Deep Play? Or I guess you could say that it is a game of turning work into play, while also "Smelling the Roses," which essentially means to enjoy life. It is hard for me to balance this because while I understand the concepts of the Mastery Mindset (George Leonard's work) and Deep Work (Cal Newport's work), I am struggling to reconcile this with play. There are times when all I want to do is hike in nature and not be bound by a schedule. I am an INFP and INTP. How do we balance between Deep Work and Deep Play or "Smelling the Roses?" This is my main conflict and criticism in doing Deep Work. At what point is Deep Work workaholism? Workaholism is what I want to avoid because I do not want a be another Christopher Robin. I want to be a Pooh Thanks! Thank you for your time!

Thanks. Right now, my work is a grind at the moment. My main concern is that I want to do Deep Work, but I do not want to be a workaholic. I am trying to figure out how I can balance the two.

I was asking myself a similar question while I was playing Skyrim. There really is no movement, only a change in perception on the screen. In the same way, the screen of our minds is always here and now and sensations and perceptions are changing. You can test this out through imagination because that is essentially the substance of dreaming. Notice that you always remain and are always present in every moment. But if we look deeper, we realize that we aren’t the entity in the dream, but rather the entire dream itself, as it is our imagination. So that is the illusion. The illusion is that you are an entity in the dream and the same is true in the real world.

I had a similar question too. But I realized that you can still walk your path, while also learning from this badass resource. what is you alternative? Are you gonna watch cat videos now? One of my favorite Leo quotes is that he said “if you think this is a waste of your time, then this is the best waste of your time.” Leo’s content is so deep and holistic that is really rare to find. You really won’t find anything like Actualized.org in school. From watching, I have gained mastery of my own path. I don’t agree with the quote you paraphrased. Walking you path and learning from others is 100% compatible. In fact, learning from others I find is the best and most efficient way for me to walk my path. Why not learn from others failures and successes in doing the same work? Something to think about.

From watching Leo's blog video on Water Fast & Nutrition, it really inspired me to take more action on my diet and to stop eating junk food. He also said that many of the foods are contaminated with pesticides, metals, etc. I am a noob to diet, as my family just buys food from Walmart or local grocery stores. What are some ways that I can obtain healthy food? I thought about growing my own garden with tomatoes, potatoes, mushrooms, green beans, etc. Also, I thought about doing a water or blueberry smoothy fast, but I feel like I am already close to being underweight. I am 6ft tall and weigh 145 lbs, so I think fasting is not such a good idea for me. My main concern is that I would like to clean up my diet, and I am not sure where to start. My main reason is because the diet I do now may contribute to long-term problems. My current diet is the following: 1. I eat one spoonful of Jiff peanut butter and honey a day 2. I eat waffles a few times a week 3. I eat sunny-side-up eggs every day 4. I eat bananas and apples every day 5. I eat spaghetti, pizza, ribs, stake, salmon, every once in a while (once every 2 or 3 weeks) 6. I eat cookies and cream ice cream about every day 7. I eat salads (iceberg lettuce and carrots with ranch dressing) 8. I eat chili about every day 9. I only drink water or blueberry smoothies. I would appreciate any suggestions. Thank you!

Thank you! Much appreciated!

@Leo Gura Thank you! I saw your vegetable soup and blueberry smoothy videos. I will check out that video "how to shop for healthy food." I have a question: What is your diet? Like could you please name me some of your healthy meals that you usually make and/or like to eat? Thank you! I got your booklist so I will try to read up more on the nutrition section of your list. Thank you! Will do lol! I am fortunate that I am currently in good health and shape. I totally take it for granted like Leo mentions in the water fast video. Btw: I am taking the second dose of the pfizer vaccine tomorrow. I hear the second dose kicks you in the butt. What ideal weight do you all recommend I obtain before water fasting? I am 145 lbs, 6ft tall, age 24, I am in perfect health thus far in my life. I do not plan on water fasting any time soon. It will probably be a hidden ace I will have for later in life, assuming I live longer and gain weight.

It is a bit of a contradiction. As soon as you define awakening, it is not awakening. Go out and meditate and experience it for yourself. As soon as we start defining awakening, we turn it into concepts, stories, and ideas, which ultimately prevent us from awakening. You see? The ego is bound by concepts and the more you define, the further away you are from It. The only definition of awakening is that it is the silence and absence of you and all definitions. It is the Actuality of Being. But of course, don't turn this into another story.

So David Lion explains in his video here about intuition and how it is aligned with playfulness and our highest excitement and passions. I am wondering how this differs from our reptilian brain because in Leo’s new video on holism, he says how we have a fragmented ego: An ego who values spirituality and productivity, and an ego who wants to play, eat ice cream, sex, food, etc., which is why we have ego backlashes. I may be confusing the two, but how do we know if our impulse or drive or message is our intuition or our reptilian brain?

Ok! Thank you so much for the clarification. I think this also ties into higher consciousness vs lower consciousness, as well as Wisdom vs. foolishness, which these all boil down to love vs. fear. This makes more sense now. Thanks.

Here has been my struggle with the solipsistic or idealistic idea that the external world is imaginary. The Actuality vs. Concept exercise seems to assume that reality is nothing but our senses and everything else is imaginary. I have been really thinking about this, and since we are all trapped in our own separate perceptual bubbles, we cannot truly know that external world without first encountering it through our perceptual field. However, this does not mean that there is no reality beyond the senses. When I look up at the stars or examine the wonders of nature, I believe there is more to reality than what I am experiencing. You could say this is imagination, and I do get the point that I have only experienced my own perceptual bubble and nothing else, but to say that my perceptual bubble is the only thing that exists seems to fall into the epistemic trap that what I am or what you are experiencing is all there is. Here are some examples of why the external world exists: - COVID-19 exists and has been affecting many people throughout the world. (Sure, you could argue that COVID-19 and the people who are in hospitals right now are imaginary from my perspective, but there is still an external world outside of my perspective that they are occurring in.) - If you do not agree that an external world exists, then why shouldn't I leave my drink at a bar instead of watching it and taking it with me? If there is no external world, then how is it that things are happening behind the scenes? (Ok, you could say that the "things behind the scenes" are imaginary from my limited-egoic POV, but things are still happening whether I am imagining them or not right? If not, then I should not ever get rohypnol in my drink since everything outside of my bubble is imaginary.) But see, what is the difference really between imagining that an external world exists vs. an external world actually existing, but I do not have access to it since I am experiencing a perspective of it (Ex. The Sponge Analogy from Perception Video). In the Sponge Analogy, Leo shows that sponge represents all of reality and each bubble is a perception of it, which seems to suggest to me that other bubbles exist independently of my own, and reality exists independently of my own bubble and mind. I hope my point is clear here in that if you go really deep into Actuality, it seems that one is isolating themselves from reality (in a way) because they take their POV for reality. A Trump supporter or anyone practically can easily justify their worldview or conspiracy theory that "COVID is imaginary, rape is imaginary, Blacks being killed by cops are imaginary, the holocaust is imaginary, Sandyhooks and Parkland shootings are imaginary, and only I exist, etc. etc. etc." I could be wrong, but I think a better way of doing spirituality is to admit that reality is not solipsistic in the way that my perceptual bubble of reality is the only thing that exists and other bubbles are imaginary. Instead, I believe we should acknowledge that Consciousness or God includes everything inside our perceptual bubble and events and other minds outside or beyond our own perceptual bubble. If we say that everything outside of our bubble or consciousness is imaginary, then I do not understand how a person with this belief could really value the experiences of others (notice that it is also a belief to believe that reality is no more than Actuality or what occurs in consciousness). Thank you for your time, I would love to know where my epistemology may be mistaken because this has been troubling me to engage in Spiritual work.

@Leo Gura I express my gratitude for your responses and will keep doing the work. My last and final question is what would you say about paranormal phenomenon? This is kind of what I have been hinting to in this thread in that paranormal phenomenon seems to represent the "something more." But If my direct experience is all there is and if I have no experience of paranormal phenomenon, then would paranormal phenomenon be a pure fantasy? I think Paranormal cannot be anything other than the "normal" the I am experiencing now. Any stories I read from the Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot are stories I imagined about reality right? But would this mean that I invented all of the stories about paranormal stuff like precognition? In a way, my life is paranormal in the sense that it is pure magic, but the idea of time travel, Astral Projection, channeling, precognition, etc. is just imagination to me. I can test it out any ideas in my imagination to see if they have truth or reality in relation to my Direct Experience. But if an idea such as paranormal stuff like precognition is something that I can test, doesn't that mean that precognition is an Absolute that exists beyond my own current experience and understanding, or am I inventing precognition as I come to understand it? The idea of paranormal seems to suggest to me that there is more to reality than I currently conceive or experience. I get that the only thing I have of reality is Direct Experience and Imagination, but what do you make of paranormal phenomenon like precognition if my Direct Experience and Imagination tell me that it doesn't exist? If I cannot verify paranormal phenomenon in my own Direct Experience or if I was to be too closed-minded to verify, does that mean paranormal or precognition does not exist since I am only imagining it? Thank You!

Thanks to all who posted so far. I pretty much read all of the posts and appreciate all your responses. I think it makes sense what you all are saying. I am going to have to keep doing my deep work to figure this stuff out. It is so easy for society to suck me into materialism. I think my main obstacle now is that I am a blind man who hasn’t seen the rainbow yet. And you all probably have seen the rainbow and are trying to describe it to the blind man (me).

@Leo Gura Thanks for your time. It is just hard for me to grasp how there is nothing more than this. I am I get how I am imagining you, Las Vegas, and my refrigerator (at the moment), but yet, I still believe that you exist and are having your own experiences as an ego in Las Vegas. I get how I can never truly verify an external world and other minds epistemically or metaphysically, but even if I could, that would break the whole illusion of self vs. other. Because if I could experience all experiences consciously and simultaneously, then the ego would be dead. The thing I have trouble with is that it is really to discount other people as having experiences. So if I were to counsel a person who is telling me about their traumas and needs help, I get that the traumas they experienced are being held in their imagination within my imagination in our session, but it seems invalidating to say that they never had that experience and they don’t even exist. It’s difficult to explain, and I appreciate you all’s explanations. Another reason is that my dog (black lab) is so intelligent. My dog can sense my parents’ cars by the sound they make crossing our bridge! It’s absolutely insane! My dog is like many other humans in that they believe in an external world. For instance when I am playing basketball and my dog is in the house (or is my dog in the house? Does my dog even exist when I am not seeing it? I do not know, but I do think there is more to life happening within other experiences contained within the video game or collective dream or whatever you wanna call this.), my dog goes crazy. I can hear him whimpering and scratching the door. In another instance, my friend is playing basketball outside while my dog and I are inside and the dog “knows” that it is my friend. It just blows my mind. It is difficult to see the evidence that my experience is It because it seems like we are all experiencing fractals of this universe. Whether or not an actual plane of reality exists outside my own is still unknown to me. Couldn’t it be that Consciousness divided itself into all of the private worlds in the world and that it is not the world we are experiencing, but instead the dream we are creating together as the Godhead that experiencing all perspectives of itself? I apologize if I am not making sense. It just seems like when we state that only our perspective is Absolute Truth, it seems to be missing all of the worlds of the 7 billion people and the billions of animals, and the aliens from other planets, etc. etc. (I know I am imagining aliens on another planet in the same way I am imagining Santa clause and the earth and my parents, dog, and the experiences of 7 billion people, but couldn’t it be the case that even though Consciousness is Oneness, that within Oneness contains all other perceptual bubbles for which I as an ego will never have access to? Which includes the idea that there may be more to reality than my experience; hence, if there wasn’t, then who or what am I writing to? You may answer that I am talking to myself, which I assume means myself as in the God Universe rather than the ego experience, but the myself for whom I am writing to is an experience beyond this egoic experience I am having now. Right?) Gosh it’s hard. I appreciate your all’s time. I think I am having an ego backlash from learning about psychology and therapy. The problem with our society is that it suits a certain paradigm for me as well as others to engage in the professions they wish to engage in (ex. Helping others, which you could say is the same as helping myself as the God Universe rather than ego experience). When I say I think there is something beyond myself, I am saying there is more to life than this egoic consciousness or experience. There are many worlds that I believe exist even though I am trapped with my own egoic experience (the egoic experience is everything I am experiencing that separates me from the rest of the world). An example is that there seem to be many worlds which I don’t have access to within this dream such as: -blind/deaf worlds - PTSD, psychosis, and other mental disorder worlds - colorblind worlds - the world of an owl, cat, or toad, etc. ? Thank you!

@Leo Gura Ok, let's use that analogy to say that we are in a dream where we believe this dream is all there is. But isn't waking up the process of realizing that there is more to reality than the dream we were in? In the same way, I am in the dream now saying that there is more to reality than this dream I am. If there is no reality beyond this dream, then there is no waking up. You cannot be awakened without being first a dreamer. What is lucid dreaming without the context of a dream and a reality? If life is only a dream, then what is the context of waking up? I am restating my point in the hope that I am making sense because it is difficult to explain. I am basically trying to go from being a bubble to becoming the entire sponge. From that analogy, I got that the sponge represents the external world or the entirety of the universe and each of the bubbles represents the infinite perspectives, dreams, or consciousnesses within the universe's existence. In other words, the sponge is the holder of all of the perceptual bubbles in the same sense that the circle holds the yin and the yang together. The sponge analogy to me seems to suggest that there are other worlds contained within the field that are outside of my experience while at the same time being connected to my experience. This suggests to me that there is "an imaginary" "external world" that has all the bubbles contained for which I am only conscious of experiencing each one at a time. It really feels like there is more to this world than my own perceptions, which is also the same thing as me saying in my dream that I think there is more to life than what I am experiencing (which of course is a correct assumption; hence, waking up). If there was nothing, but the dream, then what does it really mean to "wake up?" Are we just waking up to another dream? If that is the case, then it wouldn't really be waking up. Having a lucid dream has to have the context of a reality vs. a dream. Otherwise, it would be just a pure dream with no context of a "waking up." Thanks for your time.