Origins

Time is not an illusion, you contemplating time is an illusion rendering the contemplation obsolete. This is a simulation of sorts, as its analogous to illusion, simulation isn't Bostrom its just a motorised definition of illusion, meaning illusion with an engine, like a video game. You're God playing a sim. You'll likely never come to terms of this, always aim for higher levels of awareness and maybe you might. I am a just newborn baby walking a pram to the liquor store with their labor exhausted mother with a fake ID and a machete with an axe to grind on any cashiers that are going to give me any attitude, get used to it. [ don't misinterpret humour as trolling, first paragraph is deadly serious ]

Just feed your consciousness healthy influences, as for people, its good to keep in touch. It's a feedback loop, that's basically the underlying principle there. I mean if you're living on a military base then the likelihood is that your the average of the degree to which the ideology is followed and if its based on any number of people, its probably at least a 100. 5 is just a meme, they say 5 because well, I don't want to say because it sounds kind of mean even though its not just don't want to offend and its really okay if that's you're deal, if you're smart you'll understand why but it really has nothing to do with influences. Quantity competes with ideology, both internally and externally, so in reality describing that narrative is a little more complicated than simply reducing it to 5 people but its all reduced to feedback loop and the capacity and processing constraints of that feedback loop. People matter though of course, I'd just focus on removing the people that bring you down if you can't negotiate better terms with them. You want people around you that raise you up.

Books. Research. I'd stop subordinating yourself. Either way you're going to learn more that way because your brain can process more information through the written rather than the spoken word. Unless you're like under someone like Elon Musk or the person is a legitimate genius who has thorough credibility. Most people are not credible even though they want to appear to be. Treat everyone as a peer rather than as a teacher and you'll learn a heck more, you'll also see through the so called "teacher" far more easily. People who want to be looked at as a teacher have severe psychological issues, seriously. Happy to explain the reasoning.

Full proof method (improvement made overtime): Step 1: focus on mindfulness (in a released sort of way so there's less rigidity with the present state) Step 2: Identify the emotion you're experiencing Step 3: Validate the emotion Step 4: Focus back towards mindfulness Step 5: Practice shifting from this state to any imagined alternate state (i.e. a different feeling, like shifting from calm to fear, from fear to love, etc). Continually back and fourth (30 seconds to a minute) practicing the switch, sometimes moving back to mindfulness/calmness to draw state from a centre-point. 30 seconds for each step until step 5. This can obviously be used for motivational purposes (i.e. step 6 can include aligning to ones primary goals), and overtime, well, the gains will speak for themselves. (I didn't watch the vid just because I know my method will be better - cheeky ) Thank you for making the thread though @tsuki gave me a chance to share with others.

@Jo96 To add to my comment just previous. "Society thinks so", honestly I'm shocked that you don't have an automatic primal instinct that would want you to ensure that your child is protected for as much as is intelligently (with the highest integrity) possible. This is a non-debate right here. It's biology not society. That very inclination is why society is falling a part (it starts with the family home), so you want to know one of the reasons for why in the future it looks like your countries circumstances are bleak? Decisions of fathers to not take responsibility for serious life circumstances like yours. Don't look to use any other belief system as a scapegoat and anyone here that's supporting any decision to not take responsibility, unless his like mentally handicapped, is a fraud of a mind.

@Jo96 Complete responsibility. You are the male in this situation, the male always takes more responsibility in my opinion. That's what it means to be a man, I don't want to get into any gender arguments with anyone but women offer many other positives that a man could never match. Personal responsibility doesn't equal self blame or anything like that, just navigating the situation as intelligently as possible in light of recognising personal responsibility. It means accountability for ones own cause and effect. You played at least half the part in bringing a consciousness into this existence that is likely going to be brainwashed by a father, mother, culture, education in various ways. Imagine if that child were you. Not only that, other beings on this planet will now be affected by this consciousness you've brought into this plane of existence, that's also your responsibility. Self actualisation has nothing to do with pointing inwards, inward focus is a means to an end, the end no where other than higher integration of existence, the consequences of which tend to result in expanding the circumference of ones responsibility rather than solely confining it to ones physical space. You will do what you will do though. For the child, for you, for everyone that you will affect by the decisions you make around this situation, I wish you the greatest strength to make the most courageous decision here that reflects your highest integrity.

@Strangeloop I feel you need to expand your scope and vision on life. Start researching many different cultures around the world, it'll change your perspective. You should be concentrating on your vision for life, for everything else, if it doesn't flow (gel with your vision - and I'd make world understanding a part of that) let it go, life is so complicated in the context of two people coming together, there's so many variables at play unless you've like known each other forever. People have to mould together, fit in, there should be no force really, otherwise it feels like an arranged marriage. I would look into your attachment style as well, I sense you're reducing yourself and putting the other person above yourself, for example although there's other nuances and symmetries a secure attachment style (the one to aim for and build from) is about "I'm okay, you're okay", an anxious style can (not always) be like "I'm not okay, you're okay", a dismissive avoidant "I'm okay, you're not okay". Know that you are already free. Once you enhance your knowledge, go through your healing, make changes where you need to, you'll be okay Strangeloop, trust me. You'll be okay. Best and feel free to chat more if you need to.

@ColeMC01 Some people marry their pets. I think that answers your question.

@neutralempty Create a site and charge people for it though haha, I can easily see for example how simply understanding the mechanics of imagination can be so important for just for staying on track in goal acquisition, especially the more creative those goals are. Most people create a gap between thought, imagination and goal acquisition. By merging them into one while simultaneously separating them, you can understand how you need just as much energy used in the brain storming phase to create the goals as you do in the chasing of those goals in the imaginary realm. For example its easy for people to get to the goal completion phase and just kind of forget the meaning of what they're doing because they've forgotten that the mental effort they needed to create the vision is now the mental effort they need to protect the vision from outside noise. Analogous to a signal to noise ratio, first you create the signal, the vision, then you protect it from the noise while maintaining an imagination for that signal. It's easy to see then why disinvesting from activities that harm attention while investing in those activities that improve attention has many long term gains.

@neutralempty Yeah imagination is much more nuanced than people realise, memory and intelligence, also nuanced, naturally overlap with imagination and imagination they, but they're not synonymous, this is a geometric interplay, its not as simple as saying its "all imagination", not even that its "all intelligence", although its more the latter its not from the strictest sense because there are things that both memory and imagination do in the context of both one another that are arguably not all that intelligent, though some of those things may still be useful to specific forms of imagination and memory itself. For the former, level of detail has a bottleneck regarding its utility for intelligence, after a certain point the extra detail isn't going to aid in the context of problem solving but for the sheer value of creating a realistic experience that augments our perceived consciousness it does, and thus may have both pro's and con's for our psychology. The same too for hyperthymesia or "superior autobiographical memory", given this isn't coupled with processing power, its utility is proportionally useless, because of course the more processing power you have the more useful having more memory becomes, while at the same time having at least an average memory is useful across all scales. Unless you've been socially ousted by your peer group in the 1300's for stealing a loaf of bread so now you'll be beheaded, the less you remember about the incident and the upcoming beheading even during the process perhaps the better off you'll be from a general happiness perspective. This is of course how popular, albeit idiosyncratically typical to a bemusing culturally impoverished society, adages like "ignorance is bliss" came to light. Interpreted properly, its not that ignorance is bliss, its that someone just has an easier time of forgetting the pain, but the pain is still there nonetheless unless they're being cared completely for by social nets. To the contrary, all things held equal, although it can be a double edged sword, in many instances in light of the suffering and realignment people need to go through, the lack of imagination is most certainly not bliss in these instances, the ignorance (+ capacity) of which often comes at the cost of recovery. Just as its been postulated that virtual reality can be a form of treating people with various phobias to other so too the harnessing of or building of a powerful imagination for strategic self-interested, self-actualising purposes.

@AAW The imagination operates analogous to how a film might, it puts the mind in the seat of a car that's going to take it to a ride its never experienced before and consequentially, experience contrast that makes it re-conceive of the present known world which is why, although films are good to store as memories because you can also practice rearranging them in a way that makes your present mind more flexible I'd preface this by preferencing imagination over films of course. The imagination also allows us to know and learn things that we've never learned before, for example, even though you may never have played the piano, as the vividness of your imagination increases, so too does the influence of the mental realm on the physical realm in terms of allowing you to learn things without being in the physical presence of the mental preoccupation. What is the imagination though? I think this needs to be broken down. To me as a preliminary definition outside the scope of standard ways of looking at it, it's simply the malleability of otherwise concrete contents in consciousness. That's from the perspective of a conscious definition though, because then we also have unconscious imagination don't we, which goes into wondering about the relationship between not only imagination and lucid dream states but also visions, premonitions and the like as well, as if to say that somehow, perhaps not the imagination but at least consciousness, has this inescapable link to the rest of reality, like an electric cord does a power outlet. For this I would wonder, is the imagination just the means to an end for this consciousness to reality relationship or does it play an intrinsic role somehow? In light of the malleability of the imagination, I suspect that it's perhaps a bit of both but leaning towards just a means to an end simply because its an ability that can decrease or increase relative to use which seems to independently change relative to consciousnesses possible connection with all of reality. I'll be releasing a book on the imagination within the next couple of years so I know a bit more than most so happy to share ideas as well as learn what ideas you may wish to share. Good post!

@meow_meow No problem, stay strong! You've got this!

@SS10 Not impressed with Robert Greene either (saw that as a thread somewhere). Jordan Peterson's only useful comment is the relational feedback loop that a human being needs to optimise between their prefrontal cortex and their autobiographical memory in order to derive self-wisdom via reflection. And I said it better than him. And I didn't need to write a book, nor two. These people are scamming you because they know you're stuck at the cultural casino (its a real thing - millions of people play the slot machines on YouTube and bookstores especially in the personal development section looking for that fix that's never going to come). Give me money now please, I just made your life exponentially better with that one insight. They take advantage of the fact that people's relational relationship with their prefrontal cortex and in particular their hippocampus (parietal lobe implicated along with corpus but let's not overcomplicate) is very low, we'll call it the PC-H-R relationship (where R is to relational). People cannot think for themselves, and scammers like the Tai Lopez's build the "thought can" vending machines to make a lot of money from people's ignorance. This is the very reason for most people's ignorance by the way. I think Jordan has a good heart, but a good heart doesn't always have completely pure intentions while at the same time I also think he's a bit ignorant of the ramifications of this very simple insight combined with peoples capacity to improve themselves here. See Jordan is a determinist in many ways, he hasn't denounced free will, but he has low openness when it comes to peoples capacity to improve their cognition through a simple technique like this. This one simple ignorance, is what gives him the justification to write books of "tomato and barbecue sauce please, oh yes and with onion. Garlic? Yeah adda little of that as well, and sauerkraut!". They want your money just like a beggar wants your money, more importantly they want the status more than the money so give the money to the beggar instead and if you really want to build long lasting insight, fix your damn brain and you'll thank me for it later.

@RedLine Yes I agree. Like good and bad forum posts. Forum is at the very low end at the moment , looking to COVID-19 rampage a supermarket for nappies and send via express post wherever most of those thread creators live around the world. Biologically there is good and bad, socially there is good and bad because we fail to socialise appropriately if there aren't some basic customs followed, politics there is good and bad because it encompasses the laws that socially we will have to follow and be pissed off or fortuned by depending on those laws, changes, government spending, etc. Your reference frame of good and bad, which should be a good one but is very tough to do because then you'd know precisely how to act between now and the end of your life which almost no one knows how to do so its always a work in progress, is dependent on your intelligence, cultural influences and level of learning and subsequent wisdom you've generated from those influences. I swear someone please shoot me (taking some time off from the regular forum here I think) If I owned a gun the odds of me shooting myself in the head have gone up by at least 0.1%. Is that completely bad or good? No, in a way it's kind of humorous. Sounds like something that would be in a comedy scene of some series, film, or whatever. Your only option is to advance your mind (inclusive of consciousness and intelligence), I've learned the hard way, that's the only way up from here Mr/Ms theoretical rollerblader of time's running out in all of our lives! In answer to your question, at least you're keeping someone tangibly happy! Are you though? Take it to the extreme, figure out every conceivable way in which she doesn't feel your love. How far could you take it, how much could you make mommy dear happy? "Mom? How much could I make you happy? Please. I'm desperate. I love you, I want to be a good little boy." That'll help you figure out the finer details of your answer. Otherwise the absolute in its absolute does not give a damn what you do in its grander plans, it knows you have your faults as the 7+ other billion people do. I do expect some form of accountability though. So if you want the answer of all answers on how to live your life, the answer lays in solely contemplating the previous sentence. Make your time count, for the best good you can workout. Look at me, I'm kind of a sarcastic asshole that's going to get penalised in some way, but I embrace it, and I'm giving you good advice at the same time. So who's to say I'm going to hell anyway if there is one? I'm serious though, focus on that word, accountability. It'll change your life, its a much deeper word than what's popularised in self help culture as well, its worth more cosmic dust than Pamela Anderson's boobs when she was in her prime and that's from the point of view of teenage boys with a secret magazine collection hidden from mommy and daddy.

@Farnaby What's the point in being in a relationship if you're not vulnerable? What you just want to fuck her? What's the motivation? That's what it boils down to doesn't it. Fucking. This is not a good philosophy. If the women isn't vibing its not meant to be, if the guy isn't vibing its not meant to be. Move on don't let your ego get in the way, just process the situation, learn and adapt. Both women and men objectify one another which is why you're going to run into dissonance about these subjects because there'll be situations where you're "vulnerable" or whatever and its not serving the interaction because the women is just into objectification or vice versa. Don't waste time with people, literally, zero fucking time, with people who aren't living up to your standards. You've got your standards there for a reason, negotiate with one another as you learn about each other but we've only got so much time left on this planet in this particular physical form. If they're not evolved enough, find someone more evolved. If you're not evolved enough, leave the poor gal alone because maybe you're being vulnerable about something you should have healed from, learned from, progressed from or whatever it happens to be. But then maybe you're vulnerable about something that serves both your levels of development in which case go poor the wine of vulnerability and get drunk in each others dreams until you've both grown from the situation. But. Don't. Fuck. Around. Always focus on learning. Best.

@trenton Honestly this is ridiculous. Get a grip on yourself.

@NK13 Learning to adaptation is the only antidote to suffering, ideology on the other hand is the opiate of the masses but a necessary vice.

@meow_meow 1. Contemplation work on the following - the importance of congruence between words, actions and the karma that gets created there 2. Congruence - Ensure as much as you can that - your words of intention match your actions (arguably one of if not the most important aspect of personal development is this kind of congruence) 3. Contrast bias - How is it that a coal miner can work for almost zero dollars a day in the putrid skin melting heat to survive but you're unable to control your cravings? How is it that a mother can give birth for upwards of 10 hours but you can't put down the cookie when its not the best to have a cookie? And don't get me wrong, cookies are great its your choice, but this is not about whether eating is bad and what kind of eating is bad this is about trying to achieve higher congruence. To me there's concerning these scenarios there's usually huge amounts of hidden and unconfronted dishonesty occurring between your relationship with reality and your relationship with yourself, one of the things I've stated was the value of having yourself as your best friend, which means something different to various people, but what comes before that is your relationship to reality. If you don't put your relationship with reality, which is detected by all of your senses, intuition and overall intelligence including that which clear past experience is meant to inform you about, first, you'll compromise any friendship you have with yourself when it comes to that friendship being based in reality. And that's like any relationship, and I have no doubt, even if its not apparent that because there's a lack of congruence in this area there's probably going to be a lack of congruence in other areas of your life too, because integrity is not just something that happens in the moment, it ripples out in time and it leaks into and affects every other aspect of integrity we can have with reality. To the degree that we fall out of alignment with this relationship with reality in the context of congruence is to the degree that our integrity will be compromised. Integrity in this breath simply means following through and a pairing between words and reality, this is valued far more highly than simply the ability to "be nice", being nice allows you to "blend in" but it says nothing about your ability to actually cope with reality or even have friends because who wants a friend that's always nice anyhow, I mean at least there's congruence with something but a lot of the time people are overly nice when there's reduced congruence between the relationship the person has with reality and the relationship they have with themselves. I made a statement yesterday that one of my ideal financial scenarios was to be able to save all of the orca whales from captivity; that's a pretty big statement I made there that's going to force me to motivate myself in a lot of areas that I've never motivated myself towards in my life, and if I don't follow through with my goal there what does that say about me? You might never achieve your lofty goals but didn't you really do your darnedest to achieved them? The latter is the true measure of congruency, because at least you did your best to discover the truth. So... 4. Truly do your best to discover the truth - That's a lot what congruency is about, "How am I working towards that?" "What is the difference between goal and actualisation so far and what actions do I need to bridge the gap?" It causes minor but incrementally worse damage that can be increasingly terrible on a large scale of time if we do not at least strive to meet the goals that we set out to do. I'm not at all a person that likes people that say a whole bunch of crap and then finishes with "Hey I'm just human too but... I'm giving you the oughts of reality", no that's a straight up bullshitter that you shouldn't listen to. I've said a whole bunch of crap on this site so far, and you may evolve from the past things you've said, which is great, but when the measurement occurs between what you said, who you are and the supposed evolution, what is left standing? What does the truth reveal? Once the mask starts to slip, its time to stop listening, reality doesn't allow you to use human fallibility as a scapegoat. Say a word, keep it and reality will return you with the corresponding reward or punishment and various degrees there depending on how accurate you are.

@28 cm unbuffed You have to rip your being out of your skull if you really want to live, look at everyone else who is doing that (meaning almost no one) I swear I'm surprised most of these people around me can even use their eyes to see where they're going. Once your being is out of your skull its got no distorting beliefs to cling to, you're just a wild consciousness ready to make something of this time you have left on this planet (in this particular physical body). And make sure you learn to feel your body, and I don't mean a little nor do I mean with any videos playing in the background. Go into yourself and feel your entire being like you've never felt before, this body that you've had ever since you were born. How much time have you actually spent feeling into all of its energetic fields? It's no wonder you've experienced getting stuck in your head forming distorting views of reality, those energies have been brought up into your mind swirling opinions that aren't even really your own they're just thoughts interacting with an energy field you haven't paid enough attention to. This is your body, treat it will but the first step to doing so is feeling into everything like the universe depended on it to create the hypothetical Big Bang to begin the universe (not saying this is how it begun), you have to wake up the stallion that's been whipped by societies bullshit for however many decades you've lived and then rein him in with your sense and expansion of consciousness through a contractive force that is simultaneously waking up everything you are and everything you've ever been but never knew it! Break out of the narratives of the mind and break into yourself to free yourself from what becomes a self inflicted trauma the more we don't notice that and maybe many mosquitos our body has just become impervious too not because we've become stronger but because the sensitivity of our body has shrunk enormously. Best.

@Libra DIG AS DEEP AS GOD DAMN POSSIBLE INTO YOUR SOUL AS YOU BLOODY CAN!!! That's it. Rinse and repeat. Nothing else. Pure. Simple. Beautiful. This should NEVER be overcomplicated like many hacks try to make it.

@28 cm unbuffed Cynicism is like a mosquito sucking your life force instead its happening to you psychically based on the beliefs you've formed about the world. Imagine everyone had this kind of attitude, if that were the case that would mean that in this particular reality your mentality was the reason why the world was fucked. So be a part of the change, if you want to, otherwise don't expect to be helped much by a world you have no strong desire to help. Entitlement created women pretending to be beautiful instagram models so they could be famous then leading to them being exposed by savvy YouTube people, this teaches one to not start a YouTube channel unless your heart is in the right place otherwise you deserve what's coming. Sincerely, wishing you much love to climb out of the hole you've created for yourself to lie in like an old person that jumped into the grave before their coffin was already made. Imagine that every time you allowed the cynicism to consume you was like that psychic energy being sucked from living your life and a pile of dirt being piled on top of you lying in the ground in some blind stupor convinced that you were actually instead in your living room playing your favourite video game that gave you illusory life achievement points that would give you the confidence to approach the girl/person you like but never happens because when it comes to doing it you realise you're just an overweight video game addict that she'd eventually get sick of and get dumped by, IF, she'd even ever say yes. Next scoop of dirt piled on. Then the next. It's an endless loop I know what its like, do what you can to develop the courage you need to become the inspirational life force you were intended to be, or maybe I'm wrong, that's for you to decide.

If you're not enlightened about it at the very least learn to become a better comedian because I notice so many old people become irritable as they age, many of them also act like a victim even though many of them are still more able than people younger than they. Victimhood is victimhood, you don't get to play it, you either are it or not it, everything else is embracing reality and moving forward. Saying this message no matter how gentlemanly is like saying it to a bunch of ants though, good luck! Ask the next old person on the street, "how many old people on average can you fit in a coffin (average sized)?" The answer is 2, I'll let you figure out why.

Ideally, although much more intensive, my goal is to save all orca whales from captivity along with any other life that I deem sentient enough to not warrant being enclosed where I build a sanctuary around the island and try to mature a process overtime where they're released or give them to a sanctuary that is relentless in achieving this goal on lease (so they never get sold anywhere else if that's at all a possibility). We often forget the sentient lives that are being lived behind bars unnecessarily (includes human lives ---- so where's their self actualisation?) and in swimming pools cruelly, we have many other abstract cultural problems as well but this is where a large art of my heart is at present. Buy them off the parks and then do my best to contribute to having the whole business outlawed. Otherwise zero countries (other than owning an island), in general the ideal should be to travel everywhere around the world continuously while actualizing, outside of this if you're a true hermit its Norway, Sweden, Denmark and maybe even Canada.

@Vision Own an island. That's what I"m going for. Not quite there yet but will one day, within a few years.

I am a monster. But I embrace love.