Origins

This is a great introductory video for people but for me this video is only a bit of the way there, there are levels of learning. It starts with (1) sense (2) perception (3) distinction (4) patterns (5) synthesis (6) remodelling potential / creativity (7) and ends with sending different biochemical cues and messages to our genetics to code for different epigenetic changes. Our biology as a whole is in a continuous learning loop, this is another more holistic combined with distinctive understanding of learning that most people miss. 1-6 describes all we can do with self awareness, of which I contend most people don't have very high levels of, I'd argue most people are actually not much greater than the fly stuck in my room at the moment being stuck banging around my ceiling light and no where else because its attracted to the light. It simply doesn't have enough depth in its reasoning on these 7 levels/stages (i.e. to figure out how to navigate out of my room). Human beings do the exact same thing, they do this for literally any addiction or attraction they have, they feel compelled to masturbate, watch x movie, song, jump on Facebook, scan for their instagram like enhancements, etc, etc. Work on these 7 levels/stages of the cycle, in particular self awareness in the context of those 7 levels and you'll advance incrementally overtime. Literally, so most people are not that much more self aware than an average house fly. That's a big deal. A fly might not be able to recognise itself in a mirror (that we know of) but humans have the exact same robotic behaviours they're not able to get any self awareness over beyond group think. Why do you think conformity is so high? Use a bee if its a better conformity analogy instead of a fly. It's a big revelation, to realise that most people around you are flies. Just bugs. It makes you more empathic if you're looking at it rightly, more self aware because you want to be aware of your robotic impulses but totally less attached to cultural narratives because you realise they're all just hovering around a bunch of cow dung telling off other flies that won't conform to that particular cow dung or cow dung in general.

In the intrinsic mental sense, an obstacle is just a pressure point, like right now I have a pinched shoulder so I'm struggling to do chin ups and I have to do certain stretches before beginning. All the obstacle though is physical pressure, we all have to ask ourselves, if we know we are infinite, why is this physical pressure that leads to this better outcome which is just a physical distance greater than what I can handle? No matter what the pressure is, its a relevant question, like I think we need balance of course, especially around sleep, but in terms of accomplishing the necessary things we ought to accomplish in the context of our natural flow of actualisation, we ought to be able to handle this pressure if we understand this simple truth. For me its not the case of proving to myself that I'm greater than the pressure, rather that my experience and non experience of the pressure itself is an illusion in the context of the flow of consciousness. This while simultaneously trying to experience that pressure with zero dissociation. There's zero need to back down but to experience it completely and fully so that the body-mind can integrate and grow from it fully. This is what people forget, they forget this aspect of experiencing things fully in every moment and because of that, forgetting that we're growing in some way in every moment as well, even into old age, just in a different sense, and its when we lose those senses that growth moves to degeneration. So in the context of actualisation, don'y let it slip, stay on the steering wheel. There's still a hot debate on free-will vs determinism, in the linguistic logical sense, it absolutely doesn't exist, but for me in a more metaphorical sense, I see it as the ever flowing and changing stream of informational data experiencing in consciousness as the shifting seas of the ocean and any agency there consciousness rowing the boat. Keep rowing while at the same time seeing through the rowing and oceanic experience in its entirety.

It depends on how you conceptualise obstacle, let's look at it in the general sense like say my keyboard is on fire while I'm typing and there's no way I can put it out or type without putting my hands in the fire. This would be conceptualising it in the mental sense as we normally do, so the obstacle is mental you see, all these kinds of obstacles are always mental. Otherwise you are life and life is all. When everything is life, there can be no such thing as an obstacle to the whole, when consciousness lives in a physical body that has various motivations however, this obstacle, combined with the latter understanding, is that the obstacle is solely mental, and can be thought of in a multitude of ways. In fact any one mental obstacle is likely at least several hundred kinds of mental obstacles depending on how we're looking at it, normally we just think about it with direct immediacy, "my keyboard is on fire, therefore I have a physical obstacle (which also happens to be psychological, emotional, cultural because what norm exists where people commonly do this other than monks lighting themselves on fire, financial because now I'll most likely need to buy a new keyboard, etc, etc)". Build your mind.

Okay so I think a healthy process to contemplate this would be something like this: Is this good for my personal development? - Listen to your intuition but at the same time, run various kinds of simulations in your mind that may even give you counterintuitive results. This is because our intuition is highly biased by past experience, so cultural conditioning and needless to say, familial attachment or their attachment to us. The following thought experiment is designed to get your brain to present you with new options, angles and so on through a process referred to as conceptual recombination, something that's often equated as creativity. For example, at least three separate scenarios per simulation , here's one simulation involving living on an island, say: (1) where you're like the guy from Cast Away (2) where you're living there under the premise of being a patient in a healing centre designed to help those with leprosy (3) a third where you're there stranded with many people of your preferred sexual partner but they're totally incompatible with you (4) another where you're there with a compatible opposite sexual partner (so you're just friends) and another where you're there with a friend and a compatible sexual partner but she cheats on you with the friend (5) another where you're there with 50 people who decided to build a commune together and one of those people is a compatible romantic partner but they nor you ever cheat on one another. Wonder what those various scenarios are like, include and remove things relative to your explorational preferences, imagine dinosaurs there even, or just something as realistic you want like potentially various farm animals that would most likely be on that island like a dodo bird used to be on at least one island, its up to you. How do you live? Are there predators? Are there threats to your values? What do you live in? Answer these in your own internal world as freely as you like. Now shift the island scenario to any number of other scenarios you can think of or feel like thinking of, make sure you're in a comfortable space so that you can imagine and contemplate freely without restraint so you're able to be guided by your intuition as much as possible while at the same time enhancing it. What this scenario building does is it at the very least momentarily resets the brains perception on its present condition relating to the corresponding real life scenario you're contemplating about. Ensuring you explore alternate pathways in the real world would be reflecting actual real life physical recombination, the more conceptual recombination you do on this situation the more likely physical recombination is more likely to occur. That's just a short answer but its a good exercise that I think will be useful for anyone who tries it.

Yeah no problem. I'm running at about 10-15% (sleep deprived) and have to stay awake for about 9 more hours so yeah. No big deal!

Everything is for self actualisation (SA), so much nonsense around the concept people don't even really understand the term. We are stupid about a lot of things including children, we have to get smarter. If someone is low on the path they shouldn't have kids full stop though as its bad for the kids and bad to be using kids as an anchor for SA. So kids are just a branch of SA.

I used to experience a lot of borderline symptoms - I have a much more secure attachment style these days, it sounds like you're at the very least partly an anxious attachment style. Solution. Learn to heal the symptoms at a causal level. Our actions are always at the whim of our emotions which produce thoughts that further corrupt our emotions to actions. Don't focus on your thoughts, focus on accepting everything in your inner experience validating everything as it arises while learning to get to the root experiences of your emotions. Then overtime the thoughts will disappear as they change as the emotions change. Maybe the book "The Highly Sensitive Person in Love" by Elaine Aron will be beneficial, there's also a book called Attached by Levine and Heller that is a decent read.

Yeah you've just got to marry the science with the experience of being human here, pun intended. Life is arguably a lie, does that mean I'm just going to put a gun in my throat and pull the trigger? No. But it also doesn't mean I'll just kick back and play video games all day, no. I'll look to master both the art and science of it. Life is difficult not because its difficult, at least not anymore, rather because of the dissonance a smart person experiences in a sea of stupid people because our brains are built to absorb our social environment and want to mirror social norms, which are made up by stupid ideas, which a smart person questions, and then they experience even more dissonance when they follow the whims of their feelings into say things like romance and it doesn't workout for them and now the dissonance they have in general about society projects onto their emotional trauma of love relationships. It's tough I get it, but Arthur lived in a harder time than us, he's a dork now, pretty much irrelevant and yet people revere him so much strangely simply because he has eloquent sentences. Eloquence is the butcher to the brain using its reason just as much as it is when a man is confronted by a beautiful woman taking an interest in him.

I don't watch porn. Imagination. But even then, these days I've now reached the point where I can transmute my inner energies to heightened self awareness which translates into higher regulation of those energies top down. Meaning I prefer sex over masturbation altogether, and these days I'm looking for more meaningful relationships. I've still got a lot to learn about relationships with women, but I'm ahead of the game in many respects but that is sort of meaningless to me now these days as well, I'm far behind the personal game of relationships I want to be playing and I'm not talking about Game by Strauss. I find that whole thing totally absurd. You have to learn about human biology and psychology when it comes to relationships but be a scientist and artist, these guys are far, far from that at least with respect to what they teach (probably because they know they're not talking to very bright people) so create your own goals and seek your own mastery there. This is the problem with comparisons.

I agree 100% with or without feeling!

Harsh but true: Die hard conspiracy theorists have severe psychological trauma that they need extensive personalised help on just like the USA won't elect someone like Andrew Yang simply because he's asian along with blaming COVID-19 on him or coronavirus like most of them are still probably calling it. With or without COVID-19 though he wouldn't get elected just because of that fact. Double whammy there to say that most people in the USA have major psychological issues. It's not a joke. It's serious business, we all need to take our mental growth very seriously, and they just, its in reverse.

For me the relationship has nothing to do with "conspiracy theory or not conspiracy theory" but just relative to the kind of consciousness interacting with the information. If most people have life wrong, if most governments have life wrong, if most of scientific "truths" take many graveyards of scientists before things are upgraded, how the hell is a conspiracy theorist suddenly going to be 100 times better than the people that actually work to press the gears in the system, talk about what people are doing in the system or make the gears themselves? If most peoples ideas about reality are a distraction, how the hell are most, some or even one conspiracy theorists ideas about reality not going to be a distraction? My point is that a self aware person is aware of the bullshit and make strategic plans accordingly, they know that on no God's Earth are people going to collectively come together anyhow and bring about any great change based on some conspiracy theory even if it was true. Let's take the hypothetical example of saying Mars is already inhabited and you've decided to go there to live, are you at all going to be caring about the conspiracy theories if you're already a self aware person that's aware of the bullshit tendencies of humans and you've already got your plans about where to move in the future? No you're not, not unless said conspiracy theory somehow conflicted with your plans, but a self aware person is going to be self discerning anyhow, there's just no way they'd end with the same result as a conspiracy theorist so they'd barely listen to what they'd have to say regardless. This isn't about lacking open mindedness to the conspiracy theory, its just about looking at the fruit on the tree rather than being distracted by the birds crapping on some old Datsun. Culture is crumbling, we're going to go through several evolutions over your next important 50 years depending on your age, spend your time becoming more intelligent and informing yourself about the nature of the world in a systematic way. Ignore everything else, there's too many more interesting things in the universe to be distracted by this stuff. Even if all conspiracy theories were true, honestly, what the fuck are you going to do about it other than keyboard jostle and virtue signal about how bad x is and how great you are? Our systems are obsolete, they will be eventually thrown out, focus on yourself goddamn it and just grow as much as possible so you're prepared for those changes as much as possible. Because they ARE coming, that's real, and no conspiracy theorist is going to give you proper advice there so don't fall for their status grab.

Short answer: (1) Remember that you have just as much right to existence as anyone or anything else, you're here so embrace it and enjoy the race to the finish line. (2) Peoples pattens of conditioning take decades to mature as personality patterns, so if you're dealing with people that are 20 plus years of age as self awareness and neuroplasticity decreases their ability to introspect on their inner feedback loops decreases. Most people follow an opportunistic algorithm when it comes to their interactions with other humans, they'll have a short term focus rather than a long term focus, moreover, once they've conditioned themselves to believe a certain way it takes an equal or greater amount of environmental situations in the opposite/different direction to change that perspective. It gets worse the more people have been convinced to believe a similar thing, simply because people are hive minds. (3) Leading on from two, you have to remember that your average person in society has the same brain of ancestors that wouldn't blink an eye when it came to killing siblings and persons within a tribe that simply didn't fit in, this is because resources were much more scarce and our strategies were much harder to mount and consolidate in the environment. Just because we live in an abundant society now does not at all mean people would not do those things today, in fact I'm a very big believer that people still do so, perhaps not physically but certainly mentally on a subconscious level. Their repetitive negative reactions are not just a reflection of dislike, on some level, they want you "out of the tribe" of their mind, which in earlier times, could be death. You see these patterns play out in families to YouTube comments backlashing against various famous YouTubers to celebrities to even certain brands that peoples brains see as tribes like Hollywood, its after all why we have conspiracy theorists, all they are, are people who compute these brands like government, CIA, etc in their brain and then begin to invent stories (at least partly) that explain the environment. So people use a top down reasoning approach not a bottom up reasoning approach when it comes to their perceptions of other people, this is such an important point to realise. Bottom up approaches take way more mental resources and subsequent self awareness, which is why I would start with point one by putting yourself first and ordering your social environment in terms of levels of self awareness then choosing your relationships from there. If you're a self aware person you're never going to have a long term amazing relationship with someone that has comparatively low self awareness (LSA), the person with LSA will eventually feel intimidated, lonely and angry which will probably be expressed with dissonance that they won't be able to process properly so they'll just end up doing something stupid, either that or the person with comparatively high self awareness will just navigate that relationship around the other persons LSA, but then they'll be the ones that will have to manage their loneliness there with whatever amount of SA they have. (4) Always be strategically planning for and moving towards a place in the future in which you've realised the ideal social hierarchy, leaving LSA at the lowest end there. Not out of superiority, but literally just out of personal safety.

That's a really great podcast, lots to learn from Bach. Lot's to learn from everyone but just to add conversation there, for me we must differentiate and create hierarchies that we put people in and that we think about objectively, so putting feelings aside inclusive of cognitive biases (so if someone is really good looking that can't be why we're listening to them or say if they're buff so they look "alpha", there's cognitive biases that we fall for here, looking to them as leaders for the wrong reasons). Almost no one does this and its so, so important to discriminate between people in your social environment including differentiating the reasons for your inner abstract relationships (i.e. "I listen to this person about advice on this or because they get my mind thinking in this way, etc") with those people. For example so many people listen to Elon Musk, but the guy barely gives any insight, so it makes no sense, that's just a whole bunch of people falling for cognitive biases around status, looks and boldness. There's many qualities I like about Elon, however there's zero reason to listen to him because that's not really the role he plays. Bach here on the other hand gives great advice in this one. Lex is a very savvy guy as well but there isn't much there personally for me to learn unless I wanted to get specific advice from him on say podcasting, AI and other technical things. I like his personality, but that's not a reason to listen to him outside of say interviewing really insightful people like Bach. As a side note, Lex doesn't reveal everything he knows about neuralace and Elon doesn't share anything near beyond 10% which would have been good to know in his recent presentation on the subject. Elon wears a good poker face smile with great authenticity. That's a very handy quality to have.

I just observe and document the cognitive biases of this object we've called "people". Remember, its just an identity (this object we've called "people") we've created about a moving film in front of our minds and and eyes, most peoples capabilities as it concerns rotating this rubric's cube is extremely low resolution. Take a step back, observe the planet from afar, zoom in real close, back and fourth, back and fourth from different positions. If you're aware of other people's cognitive biases, you're not going to get far communicating with them about it, even if they're highly developed. I'm mostly referring to the audience in a multitude of ways, not just in relation to the comments section (even in what responses have been shared here). I don't even know who Leo is, I don't even know who I am, I just observe the patterns (inner<->outer), document and have fun trying to make progress. The moment you say you're something you have to immediately question the possibility you're experiencing confirmation bias, among potentially hundreds of other biases and more. The same goes for any assertion. Imagine how far people would progress if they followed this technique in relation to how they interacted with the perceptions they have of others rather than creating an abstract identity and talking about it as if its this solid thing that can be shifted from A to B as easy as turning the ignition on and re-parking a car. That does not work in the real world, people do not work like that. This comes down to social intelligence, that is, using the kind of highest introspective one utilises in self observation and then transposing those sensibilities in relation to how they view the social environment and then incrementally improving their social perceptions from there, and in turn, the nature of their own species.

And just to add to my comment: God asks everyone at the end of their existence, "Well, I gave you this life, so ahh did you have fun? Like really give it your all?" and on this particular occasion it happens to be Jordan Peterson: "Life is suffering. That's the one core teaching I tried to pass onto my students." God responds: "Well you really got it then didn't you, this whole life thing I mean, like you really hit the nail on the head! (says in a bemused kind of way - because we're supposed to learn how to turn the actualisation process, which can be painful, into as blessing of an experience as possible, because of course, that's when you know you're really actualizing, when you have the emotional intelligence, inner knowing, self awareness to be able to have fun in as varied of situations as possible). Haha I like Jordan though, but he really does have a lot of things just slightly wrong that because of this, he missed the moon entirely with some of his reasoning about existence and the nature of continued existence. If there is (a) God, let's just entertain either possibility here, it probably wasn't the foundation for his reasoning about why to begin life on planet Earth. To Jordan's credit though, suffering in the context of the number of possible varied experiences we could be living is a complicated subject, but most of us are fortunate enough to be at least average, and the average is living far more fortunately than the experiences to be really suffering about, so its a horrible generality in todays times. Our capacities outweigh our misfortunes, though its our understandings that have magnified those misfortunes for most people to the point in which its seemingly impossible for their capacities to overcome what they'd under sensible conditions be able to flick way like a grain of sand on their hand. We are average beings living in expansive environments with primitive understandings, whereas to Jordan it seems we have incredible understandings, have genius minds with primitive environments (including inner environment) filled with enormous suffering. We all need to be very careful about who we take as an authority, and if its ourselves, what understandings we take as authority over other understandings.

It's neurological as well as many other things. The neurological perspective is good for processing the cause and effect of the individual collective inner actions that produce the internal phenomenon and where relevant external phenomenon, fun, however there's more to it than that including more than what I will say on the subject. Beyond its obvious relations to inner modelling that bring about self awareness like its emotional, cognitive and other psychological ties, it also says something existential about the nature of why we needed this kind of drive and say, as one tie, its utility in the object of survival (exactly, one tie, therefore not a deduction that is exclusive to that). How different would not just our existential interactions be with existence but also how different would our whole society functions outside the context of fun? Fun also overlaps with many other incentive functions that define certain parameters of motivations like ambitions, passions and loyalties so without fun, more than just thinking about how our present existence might entirely cease to function what I think is reasonable to do is to imagine how it would still function outside the context of fun, perhaps we'd evolve other features. I recommend thinking about those to develop your neural connections, enjoy your curiosity (fun) here .

Self awareness has (1) incredibly intricate dynamics (2) all of which express various levels of themselves as we can observe in the animal kingdom. Though we project our own understanding of self awareness of course by looking at our inner experience, transposing that onto the outer environment and then saying we're more self aware because we have more of our own kind of self awareness which sounds kind of ridiculous when you really see what we're doing, as doing that reflects extremely low self awareness, ironically. This means there's likely dynamics of self awareness we will never comprehend nor be able to experience, not because we're "too self aware" but because its built differently, I'd argue that self awareness at its optimal levels across the population we'd still see variation in certain kinds and qualities of self awareness. We always create equilibriums, lines of best fit, lines in the sand, etc, but still, the nuance of our experience is often under-represented while generalities are over-represented. Relative to their potential and the equilibrium of what we generally believe constitutes self awareness, absolutely not, at least not to a further nuance in the definition I'll now postulate. On the scale of human self awareness, I'd argue that in order to be truly self aware at a bare minimum a person should be able to orient themselves in the world relative to their self perception. Most people do not perceive themselves, they just run on autopilot. So its the utilisation of this metacognitive component in self awareness making self efficacious movements that are self derived that I'd argue is when self awareness starts to enter the picture of an individual. Our self awareness by this measure can of course vary throughout the day then, secondly, this measure of course is much higher than what we'd normally say constitutes self awareness, simply being able to identify yourself in the mirror is where the lowest levels of self awareness lives, albeit self awareness still.. Yes, absolutely, but it depends on the self awareness of the person you're engaging with, though it really just depends on the prudence of your awareness in the interaction. If they're less self aware than yourself they can easily make you less self aware depending on how much caution you have with what you say, if they're more self aware and you're aware of this that can also make someone less self aware if they become intimidated, but in both instances regarding examples I'll let you imagine based on the original premise (prudence) someone can become more self aware as well. Other than this simple dynamic, the complementary presence of another human often does increase self awareness for the simple fact that it makes someone more likely to care about them which makes them more reflective of their actions. This kind of hidden sense of responsibility in the interaction leads one to in turn, be more response to their inner actions so they express a higher ability to respond to the outer world.

In order of priority: 1. Direction (where to place ones attention - most people have no idea when they get going "relationships, money, job, introspection, where?!", so make sure you start with introspection because that'll reveal to you where to start, even if you're incorrect you'll begin honing that inner voice and even if that's combined with seeking insight in the outer world) 2. Technique ("if its money, how to make it? Am I going to run a scan selling cigarettes to homeless people saying they'll bring ever lasting life or will I try and create a self help channel?") 3. Energy Awareness - Right now I'm utilising energy to create this comment for example, how aware am I of that energy that's running through my body, mind and even around me? Am I aware of the influence that my previous actions have made to produce this comment in the last hour or so? Am I aware of how I'm going to utilise my energy after I make this comment and am I thus managing my energy appropriately throughout the day? How about the energy that I have over my entire life. So many people talk about "oh we only have one life, x amount of years, etc, etc" you rarely here people approaching life from the perspective of "Okay how much energy do I have over my entire life, what is my return on investment for that energy? For example, I know if I run today I get some exercise which is good for my health, but if I then don't run for the next year that'll be an energy investment that was completely wasted." I've noticed that the less aware I am here the less I prioritise the importance of organising my time, so I'd place energy awareness as more important than time awareness. As a consequence to that I've started to look at my energy from an entire lifespan point of view as well as with an investors mindset. So I'll literally read finance books just to apply to how I use things like my energy. 4. Abstraction - The ability to discover patterns in not just the cognitive informational stream of my awareness but my entire being and everything it experiences allows me to draw maps like the 1, 2, 3 noted above, without which I'm a fish in a bowl of water mindlessly skirting about every once in a while when, ideally, food is dropped into my bowl. This is especially important behaviourally both socially but especially in relation to myself of course, of which takes a long time to perfect and I still have a lot of work there because it ties into so many other mechanisms of the mind that you have to defeat like in a video game conquering all these aspects of a game you didn't even know existed because they were hidden. That's often the case of course, self-deception, patterns of poor parental, familial and social influences growing up that are a part of your conditioning, hundreds of cognitive biases, etc, etc. 5. Self awareness (encompassment of emotional awareness (EA) and emotional intelligence (EI)) - I'd love to be able to type about these separately but this points me back to number 3, ROI as it concerns spending heaps of time here. For this comment I'm going to focus from the angle of emotional awareness and channeling ability, something that is a subset to EA and EI. One point which has been a massive learning point for me was the ability to accept everything in existence, especially in my own experience. This is a path to generating a positive feedback loop between self awareness and the ability to translate the contents of that awareness into self actualisation. I know I'm not the only one here for various reasons, our being develops all of these patterns of denial, suppression and repression of our emotional experiences which can vary in severity. This has major, major problems for ones personal development because to me in order to authentically express ones own highest actualisation process they need to be able to surrender and accept to anything they're experiencing in order to (1) maintain awareness that its there rather than pretending its not (2) doing so long enough that they can transfer the energies/contents within that awareness into some form of self actualisation, and I would start energetically. See, in order to really comprehend this one needs to recognise what self actualisation actually means in a straight forward manner, or just the practical limits of its parameters. It's meant to encompass literally anything within your inner experience at a bare minimum. So why in the hell would you be rejecting literally anything in your inner experience? This is the problem that people who have literally any inner maladaptive conflict with the world have yet to completely comprehend, they don't realise that this exact conflict is an inner energy they're meant to be actualising within themselves. Whether that's emotionally resonating with the experience, determining the source of that emotion, backtracking in the subconscious mind to discover hidden narratives which exist that continually reinforce that conflict, etc, etc. The ability to "self actualise" has everything to do with starting in the inner experience, and its as simple as starting to learn to experience, learn about and expand non-judgementally those experiences towards self actualisation, which encompasses the full expression of literally every experience you've ever have, are having and will have. This is the key to massive amounts of motivation as well, because think about all the energy you're leaving on the table when you're having all these various inner experiences that have nothing to do with what you're trying to focus on, if you have the ability to be aware of those experiences while simultaneously learning to convert the energy that produces those experiences into what you're doing in that moment, wow man, you're on fire. There are so many useful nuanced relationships between energy awareness, abstraction and self awareness in the context of aiding ones self actualisation journey that it really pays to incrementally take the time to work at least some of them out.