WonderSeeker

Professor Jiang created a video on the social matrix!! His opening line: "Our world is a hallucination, a collective fantasy." I watched this and the following videos in series to make sense of the evolving situation in Iran (which has been gripping my awareness and informing my financial/lifestyle actions lately): - Eschatological Convergence - Law of Asymmetry - Escalation Ladder - US-Iran War His new video ties in well with Leo's OG Social Matrix video as a foundation. Never ever have we had access to this many high quality teachings for free. Blessed to be alive today

As a 28-year old US-born citizen now living abroad, I am confident in #1 happening, and not because I 'want' it to. It just seems like we crossed several major thresholds in the past decade that have made the American unipolar world irredeemable.

Step 1 is experimentation. Until you can specifiy the ONE thing you are going to do, you'll remain stuck. I worked in 8 different industries in a span of 2 years and now I am happy as fuck because through that process I found what I'm doing for the rest of my life. Try something. Anything. Fail. Try again. It works.

What are you passionate about that simultaneously offers value to society? That's all you gotta know. The rest is the journey...

Jiang's intuition is in the right place, even if he misrepresented astrophyisics a bit (credit to Dave for knowing scientific gospel better here). Even with that, Dave's just comes off as a materialist jackass who wants to talk crap because he got eclipsed. Excatly, if you just watch it and think it through there are plenty of gold nuggets to keep. Problem with secret societies is they're secret for a reason. The real question is how much they influence societies. Makes me wonder if we can look at other secret societies from the past, if there is such information on them. ----- Just prompted ChatGPT with: Are there any books of high quality, well researched, truthful texts on the history of secret societies with examples? I am trying to make sense of modern day secret societies, for example, those that may be connected to USA, Israel, Iran, intelligence agencies, Epstein (or what's left of it), and of course anywhere else. ----- It looks like the book "The Secret World: A History of Intelligence" might be a good starting place. What do you think?

What is your goal with all of this? I spent years chasing the wrong goals. Did Uber and a sales jobs concurrently at one point, so I know PRECISELY what you're experiencing. The wear and tear of sitting in that same position all day fucks your joints, on top of the mental work you do online, on lunch breaks in your car or at night. Oh and when I determined the right goal I stopped Ubering, but then spent another year going after it through the wrong lines of work (corporate job + business). Only after going directly for the goal did I reach it in a record time of 2 months. I'd say just get clear on what you want and the health problem will clear in addition to the months you might waste doing the wrong thing.

@Cred is right, look it up. Learn to love now. It counterintuitively will make you move toward your goals WAY faster than will-powering your way though mud. Speaking from experience.

Lol. I watched 30 mins into this reaction video. It's clear this guy is judging Jiang based on emotion, not logic. Just look at his smug face when he first start rolling the Breaking Points video. And the overall unserious attitude. And honestly just making crap up like his claim Jaing doesn't have students at his lectures around 4:45. Go back and count how many times dude says "I don't know," starting around 14:35. Hilarious. Had me laughing after the 3rd one in 40 seconds. I'm not usually one to speculate, but I think Prof Dave is just jealous. At best, he's unserious and needed an easy growth post to get clicks for his channel, leveraging Jiang's popularity.

Takes a leap in awareness for sure. Letting go is a process, not a goal. To be at peace is one of many example-goals one may have, where letting go is the process to get there.

Letting go is a 21st century skill 0% of schools teach. It's a skill that takes only half a year of deliberate work to build. After that life becomes much ease-ier.

What are the reputable sources in your opinion? If you can name them I'll give them a listen. ----- @Leo Gura For politics, is your epistemic knowledge acquisition strategy watching several sources and sifting for gold nuggests? Or do you know some generally good people to listen to? I'm not loyal to anyone, I just want truthful sources that present the material well. Admittedly I watch a lot of left-wing shows like TYT and Breaking Points. I think they're better than most, but are still limited to the green lens.

Lol, yes general Mao. South Korea is way too image-focused, conformist, and frankly just lost in capitalism and materialism. If capitalism had a Mariana's trench, you'd probably find Korea down there. China pays well for the work I do and is objectively trending up relative to the USA in terms of everything. Plus China has fucking Tibet and Inner Mongolia (places I've been salivating at the thought of visiting for some time now). Hangzhou, Xiamen, and Kunming are my top cities right now.

I agree with @Joshe False desire is chasing the wrong carrot on a stick, while being blind to the fact you already have the carrot in your hand. You don't need to be a spiritual coach — just be a spiritual example. Maybe if you are a paramedic long enough you can step into some kind of a chief role. I don't know how those units are structured, but something you could work on is leadership and behind the scenes simply become more conscious in the Peter Ralston or Buddhist enlightenment sense (which will have a massive, direct, positive impact on your work). I'm not super developed yet, but that's what I'm doing with my career as a teacher/scholar. It's a beatiful thing.

Yes, Youtube is blocked. But the Chinese government goes after VPNs that help people access YT and other sites, not everyday citizens. Also the Chinese government themselves operate their own Youtube channels (for example, CCCTV). Also if the NYT and CNBC articles are true, which I'm sure they are, it doesn't prove Jiang is one of those propagandists. That's just guilt by association, and right now there isn't any evidence to support that.

Actually yeah, those are good specific examples where I was like "Huh? Does he really think that?" Democrats do not support the war because the polling is like 3-10% support in the populous and a similar ratio in Congress. But he assumed they are only thinking about this like it's a chess game. I'd take what Leo said into account. Your opinion comes off a bit one sided (negative) and I'm curious why. You can choose to take some of the positive wisdom/insights Jiang offers and there would be no harm done. I'm moving to China in September. YouTube is not banned there — all you gotta do is get past the firewall (which is super easy and the government 100% allows it, as weird as that sounds). Also Jiang is a high school teacher that records his lectures and posts them on YouTube. That was the original intention until he got bigger. Start at timestamp 1:30.

Everything? I agree he emphasizes secret societies, but he also brings up eschatology (good for explaining conflicts in the blue/red middle east over the last 70 years). Also the stages of empire model (200 year cycle). Among other things. Can you show examples of people misusing with his ideas? I haven't seen any yet. Not trying to justify his actions, but I think he oversimplifies his stuff because he's teaching to high schoolers. ----- @Cred, a lot of what you wrote is pure speculation. These people said this. Those people said that. Phases like "I've even heard," "could," "might," "this does not seem" make it sound like you're loosely stitching stuff together. By the way Jiang is ethnically Chinese, but Canadian by nationality. He is very open about his upbringing in his Geo Update #8 video. I re-read this a few times and couldn't find a reason for what you were arguing for. Your claim was because secret societies are liberal, that is why they are destroying the west. Ok, interesting. But all you said was you went to some Freemasons meeting and they turned out to be white liberals with spiritual depth. But what about this actually supports your claim? Not trying to be combative, just curious what point you're trying to be make. ----- To be clear to all that read this, I’ve been binge-watching Jiang's material for the past 3 weeks. I did the same with Leo's material between 2020-2021. At first with Leo's stuff, I was not only taking action on what he was teaching me, but I was also enamored by Leo and a really big fan of the Actialized personality. With time I distanced myself from the content and this forum to focus on my life. In recent months I've crawled back in and am happy to see it's stood the test of time in my worldview (even as I've changed). I already see myself going through the early stages of this with Jiang's work. I am being careful not to swoon over his intellectual of charismatic personality, but to really take the info in responsibly and see how it all pans out. And if I become aware of red flags or you guys suggest some good ones, I'll take them into consideration. I feel skeptical naturally, yet I still haven't seen any visible major problems yet.

@Sincerity Possibly crack-potty. I don’t know how to check everything he says. Leo's work is very much "verify via direct experience," whereas Jiang's is highly intellectual, abstract, and based on other scholars/texts. Maybe others can offer their perspectives on this~

What is one thing you personally disagree with most of the forum on? ----- Note: This thread is not for being a dick or arguing with others. It's just an opportunity for you to make a journal entry about what's important to you even though it may not be the majority's taste on the Actualized forum. Breaking free from conformity means even doing things that may seem "conformist" for nonconformist reasons in a nonconformist style. Answers will vary, and I'm curious what y'all put.

This is beautiful. The way they auto-correct their movements... insane. If you have good mindfulness skills, catching every little movement will fill you with a sense of awe. My mouth hung open for the whole thing. ----- This begs the question... Will robots really take over the world?

Just preference. But also... Go to timestamp 1:37. Not saying it explains your situation, but it explains a big-picture trend happening in societies in the west and the far east.

I'm genuinely curious if you made this comment becasue you actually believe that, or just for attention. Seems absurd. Because yeah, imagine living in a place where half of society is straving (which means you are too), you don't have a right nor the means to use the internet (in DPRK everyone but the ruling class uses a nationalized intranet), and you're forced to download and repeat their propagnda or they kill you. As if they'd even let you in. ----- Even though I'm critical of South Korea and painfully aware of their problems, there's a ton of upsides here too. But you wouldn't know that becasue you haven't been here before. Travel. Explore. Experience.

For the past 6 years I've been ruthlessly applying Actualized-style personal development. I've done basically everything Leo talks about and pushed each area pretty hard. After all this time I've realized that geography plays a FUCKING MASSIVE role in how well the teachings work, at least for me. By geography, I mean everything from the country you live in, to the culture, the food, the people, the politics ... everything. This has lead me to an important insight: I need to start honoring my genetics and my preferences a lot more seriously. And also take the fucking hints when I reflect back on my life. Because honestly, I think America is possibly one of the worst non 3rd world country places for me on the planet. Not that I have much experience living elsewhere (I've only been to Canada and Mongolia for about 1 month each). But my intuitive-feeling capacities tell me so (and they're pretty sharp when they detect serious signal). I realized that living in America has been one of the biggest bottlenecks holding me back in life. As an INFP and an HSP, I am naturally extremely sensitive to my external environment and the people in it. I've tried for years to modify my behaviors using classical self-help, only to be disappointed over and over again. No, actually, pissed the fuck off. But not in an uncontrollable way. Just in a 'this is a rational response to a system that's not working for me' kind of way. Here's what I mean... This part isn't an America problem, but a climate problem: I currently live in a desert. As an HSP, the 110F heat fries my nervous system daily, impairing my brain function and forcing me to sleep-in every day. (Recently I took several sick days and lost my job recently because of it). The dust, loud car noises, and pollution all fuck with my senses as well. The basic internal message is "This place is chaotic", "I cannot think straight", "I am not safe here". After 3 years of this I am leaving for a smaller city with forests nearby. Now let's talk about America's problems... 1) Student debt. I aced college (and left with 40k in student debt). I've tried for years to go purely for the money to pay it down, but I hate corporate America and can't stomach staying in it for long. I have such a sour taste in my mouth that going to college, taking it seriously, and developing myself meant being a financial cripple. That's already an issue for me. Also, credit cards, car salesmen types, etc (I tried sales myself and found it to be monstrously unconscious and disgusting). 2) Relationships. Socially, people here are shallow, slimy, and fronting big time. Generally they're not nice and disingenuous. I know dating and socializing works for some here, but I am not a fan of game and clubbing no matter how hard I hit it and tried to enjoy it (I've done Miami and Scottsdale for example, and even the 'successes' were incredibly shallow). It's fake, overstimulating, and full of shit. And the status games are immature and pointless. Don't really need to say more, these things are self-evident. 3) Commercialism overload. Too many ads, advertising, commercials, billboards, and cut-throat tactics all in the name of money. We are so commercialized, people are getting reduced to data points and we treat each other like products instead of people. We don't value natural stuff or health, just profits by any means necessary. 4) Cutting back on EPA regulations. This one is personal because of my sensitivities, but really it affect everyone. Even people with the thickest shells are gonna be more prone to serious disease and illness. I need not say more. 5) The amount of news and politics getting shoved in your face 24/7. Sounds crazy, but in other parts of the world politics isn't a boiling pot of water. Gee, wouldn't it be nice? 6) Mass stupidity and idiocy. There's more, but this is a good starter list. - - - - - In 2 months I'm moving to South Korea to teach English to kindergarteners. It's not my ultimate life purpose but I'm proud of the decision. Plus I'm excited to be somewhere where it will be easier to live happily and make space for another run at deep personal development. Here's why I'm choosing Korea: 1) Cost of living. It's cheaper just about everywhere in east Asia. 3 years ago I got a $6 haircut and paid $15 for dinner in Mongolia (and it was all high quality too). In Korea people are generally healthier and live slightly longer than in the U.S. 2) Relationships and social life. Maybe this is preferential, but being on the more sensitive side, east Asian people are my jam. When I was in Mongolia I had some wild dates and met my first 'dream woman' there. It gave me a taste of the benefits of social cohesion and how the women there are literally the best. It's hard to date in America once you've done it there. 3) Less political nonsense. I prefer less unnecessary chaos. I'll let the U.S. bask in its own misery while I live where there's less bullshit. A little bullshit is ok (and normal), but not what the U.S. has. 4) Education and teachers are not only compensated, but MASSIVELY respected and admired. I've spoken to many teachers in the U.S. and it really breaks my heart the challenges they face. The situation is massively fucked up whether you're in a rural area or in a city. I would never teach here in 100 years. 5) Spirituality. Lots of Buddhism to go around all around Asia. In Mongolia it was a lot of Tibetan Buddhism. Not that I'm into the religious part of it. But being in a culture with a healthier form of religion (compare to the Christian nutcases in America) is important for me. Plus in certain parts of Asia they allow you to take time off to become a monk for part of the year where you do basically nothing but meditate and take care of the temple. I recently met a guy who did something like that at Mount Hiei in Japan. Another one in Nepal. It just makes so much sense with this Actualized work. 6) Better food (depending on where you are of course). 7) Asian people are more laid back, value real connection (although some of the metros can be more superficial due to fusion with expats). But in general this is true. The less western mind-virus, the better. The one girl I was seeing in Mongolia 3 years ago used to go to meditation retreats and she was so present, calm, and receptive. I was like holy shit, I've been alive for 24 years and didn't know what I was missing... not a superficial fling, but something real. YES, they do exist. - - - - - That's basically it. Ask me anything, I'm tired.

Integral theory. Of course it depends on the person. Once again I'm not saying everyone needs to pump one out. But to think it cannot help one develop both on the ground and in the clouds, directly and indirectly, is wrong I think. And I already talked about the practical stuff that needs to be done so no need to reiterate that. If you're struggling to progress with spiritual stuff, then you're forcing it at the wrong time. One massive key I've discovered in personal development is sticking your finger in the wind and knowing which season you're in (relationships, spirituality, health, career shift, money, etc). 5 years ago I made insane progress spiritually (in theory, practice, AND results). It was amazing. But today you can't force me to meditate. I do it here and there, sometimes by accident without trying. Other things matter to me right now and require more focused attention. The season to go hard at meditation, contemplation, and psychedelics will come back again, only 10x stronger. (It's a blessing not putting unhealthy pressure on yourself to become fully realized ASAP. Rome wasn't built in a day. I'm seeking a more holistic awakening as an actualized being (which is both an objective and subjective thing), not as a poor person living in mommy's basement, working at McDonalds).

There aren't many good examples of parenting and people's financial lives are piss poor (I'm currently fixing mine). The main keys are fixing your money situation, finding the right mate, and then getting excited about giving your own the kind of upbringing you wish you got. If I actually follow though with this, I will provide for my kid(s), give them tons of freedom, encourage (but never force) reading tons of books, learning from different perspectives, and doing brave things (travelling, starting a business, dating girls/guys, etc). I think having a kid and finding a way to keep a solid career and spiritual life, while being his/her biggest role model is everything. Of course, all of that is the ideal. If you raise your kids in mainstream society, other kids' beliefs, processed foods from school, TV/YT shows, advertising, and all sorts of other potentially toxic parts of society can pull them in the wrong directions. Of course, the point isn't to fight this, but to let them stumble through some of it. I'm lucky my parents were not authoritarian (for the most part). I used the freedom they gave me to explore the internet, travel to different parts of the region I was from for sports, have different friends, and read different kinds of books. The only place where they fucked up is their hands off mentality sometimes turned into avoidence, and there were a shit load of things they didn't teach or show me which made me feel unprepared when I moved out for the first time at 18. But that's just how it was being in a working class household with burnt-out parents. Good point. I think as long as you don't have a schizoid psychology, for most people witnessing birth/death slows time down and bonds people together. When our pet rabbit died a few years back, me my bothers, and my parents all gathered around him in a circle where he passed just moments before. We just sat there, present, petting his fur, crying quietly. No words, but we all felt hyper-connected. Completely unorchestrated. Haven't experienced the birth side yet, but I can only imagine it's something similar. Yeah. It's like people think all spiritual work is, is living in a log cabin by yourself, meditating or taking psychedelics, and that's it. You can't get rid of your whole life and claim that's the most spiritual way to be. Sure, some like Om Swami did it for a little while, but he's not most people. Why not fill your life up with what gives you meaning? Then make all of that into a spiritual expression. Ken Wilber: transcend and include. This forum: transcend-only, because we don't wanna be responsible for survival.

After teaching in a Korean hagwon for 5 months I can confirm what you said as accurate. I came to the factory farm conclusion from direct experience about a week ago. These poor kids are getting skewered by the system. It's pretty harsh. The Korean co-teachers at my school give these puny 6-year olds earfuls when they are too slow or make too many errors. It's a bit aggressive. A Korean guy I befriended at a coffee shop today said the parents do this to their kids to try to move up the social ladder. I actually teach in one of the most academically rigorous parts of the whole country which consistently scores high. The kids are insanely competitive with each other and it gets reinforced daily with the class dojo we use (which is against my philosophy, but what can you do). I favor the Finnish style of education where they lay off competition based academics/athletics until you get into your teens. What Korea used to pull off an economic miracle decades ago is being put into overdrive to barbecue its young people. Not good. I'm moving to a different country to teach after this year.