Ben Landrail

Jacob Collier is an absolute genius, a once-in-a-lifetime musical prodigy. He's good-looking, highly intelligent, creative, well-spoken. His knowledge of harmony is out of this world. He has perfect pitch and a great voice. He has won several Grammies for his ridiculous arrangements. He has collaborated with the best of the greatest living musicians and received tremendous praise from many of them. If you understand music even a little bit, you will be in awe of this guy's otherworldly level of talent. No amount of practice can get you to that level. Not even ten lifetimes of it. He is just built differently.

As Camus wrote in the Myth of Sisyphus, committing suicide because you can't see a meaning in life is absurd since that claim implies that some absolute truth about the nature of existence is available to you. Which is false, because you are merely a human being, with all the accompanying cognitive limitations. I would comment that you're operating based on logical assumptions. But why does existence has to be logical? Human capacity for reasoning seems to be a by-product of evolution, which we use today for the oddest purposes like justifying one's existence - or suicide. If you want to alleviate suffering, you can devote your life to hardcore spiritual practice, become enlightened and live in a constant state of bliss away from society. Why not get the best of both worlds? I am not particularly interested in entering this deep and murky discourse of meaning and purpose. It would probably take years to master, and what for - to satisfy my need for logic? So that my life would be logically impeccable? I couldn't give less shit about it. I should admit, however, that looking into these things helped me clarify my position towards life. Knowing that I will die and that I want neither to kill myself nor to become a mystic/hardcore philosopher/scientist (who might believe that science will find meaning in the future, when humanity as we know it ceases to exist), I'm choosing to play the game, even though I didn't ask for it. And to get as much happiness and fulfillment as is available to me. Luckily, the problem of happiness is much more down-to-earth and can actually be solved.

@Thanatos13 I like your line of thinking, at least you have a coherent way of presenting arguments that actually make sense. I'd be interested to hear your opinion about the alternatives to spirituality that actually help us live a life in a meaningless universe. Since science is concerned with creating models and analysing phenomenons, what do you turn to when you have to make existential decisions? What's your approach?

Maybe enable post reputation, sort of like on Quora. If that's possible. They don't allow you to sort answers by their popularity, but show the amount of views and likes.

@Faceless Yeah, completely forgot about images. I believe there are non-linguistic thoughts, i.e. simply mental images. But for an image to exist it has to originate from somewhere. At the very least, there has to be a basic foundation, a collection of forms and lines. Unless, of course, we're talking about drug-induced hallucinations of which I've little understanding. Here's another good one for you: if one is born blind, deaf, mute and insensitive to any other outside stimuli, will one be capable of thinking? Language is out of the question, visuals and sound too. What would the content of one's mind be? If all contents of the mind ceased to be, that would mean that the neural connections would also disappear and we would have a brain with billions of isolated neurons. I'm not in a position to make even an educated guess about what this kind of brain would be capable of. But my uneducated guess is that it'd be totally screwed.

The first question would be what we understand by thinking. If we're talking about the process of operating mental concepts through the use of language, then here's how I see it. Language was invented by humans, using the brain, and is learned by humans, using the brain. If you don't learn a human language early on (cf feral child), your high-level abstract thinking capacity is severely limited. I'm not sure we can call what this creatures do thinking as we know it. Without language-bound thinking you still have intuition and awareness, but I think everyone would agree that both these wonderful things can get you only so far. @Faceless arguably, if we wipe out all the memories - and the knowledge of language with it - a person would still be able to think, but in a very limited way. He/she would have to build all the mental concepts anew, and I'm not sure if it's even possible. So we're back to the definition of thinking. EDIT: another interesting question would be how did pre-language humans think? Or have we always had some sort of language, even though utterly rudimentary, like a combination of gestures and growls?

@Sigma External activity doesn't necessarily bring suffering, it just gives us experiences that are considered somehow inferior. In a sense, after reaching total enlightenment (if it's possible), we stop being human and become something else. Since for most of us,reaching higher levels of spirituality is impossible, undesirable or problematic, I would say that, in general, the goal of inner work has to be eliminating neurosis and needless suffering, increasing awareness and attaining certain other things, while still living fully and contributing to the world as a human being.

@Sigma excellent question. What Leo "teaches" can be confusing and highly problematic at times, especially when you try to implement it. And I'm absolutely sure 99% of people do not understand the concepts he shares correctly. Hell, I'm perplexed at times myself, and not too infrequently. But back to the topic. There are several things that I can point out. First of all, the conceptual part. If complete self-transcendence and enlightenment are our true/highest states, then why indeed bother getting involved in anything else? It would be informative to look at a number of advanced meditation/enlightenment students and see what they have done in their lives. I read an article about the scientific research on meditation, and the most advanced guys that took part in the research looked like bums and worked some part-time jobs like bike messengers etc. That is, no external impact on the world. Here one can recall the suffering argument. On the one hand, suffering is real and natural, so we have to accept it. But on the other hand, if suffering can be avoided, eliminated or reduced, what reasons do we have to not do this? And it's absolutely obvious that we can do something about it. Just think about small pox and vaccination. If everybody sat meditating in their huts, people'd keep on dying in hundreds of thousands. There's also the issue of making a living. How on earth will you make a living when all you do is reflect and meditate? Where will you get the motivation and inspiration to do anything except self-work? In the end, I think the duality Sigma is talking about is inevitable if you want to be a part of the society, and also if you wnat to enjoy other facets of life except spirituality and being an observer. If you stop doing inner work, you're surely become neurotic very soon and fill your head with tons of rubbish. If you stop caring about the external results, you'll stop producing good results, because why would you? I'm afraid I've got more questions than answers, though. But maybe even that helps

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@Achilles-A He'll be still too young. If he's 30 now, he'll be 34 then, while only people aged 35+ are allowed to run for presidency.

Decide what you consider worthy of your time and do it.

Full-time content manager at an internet company, part-time videogame composer and rock guitarist/songwriter, working hard to make things to be the other way around.

Upon waking up, if I don't feel like getting out of bed at 6 am, I ask myself: "Do you want to be a mediocre loser or an outstanding human being?". Usually, it does the job. If not, I just force myself. Lack of discipline is often caused by three things: poor habits, lack of clarity and fear. By poor habits I mean that the more you act in an undisciplined way, doing stupid shit, the harder it is to become disciplined. The cure is simple - you must start doing the right thing regardless of your emotional state. By lack of clarity I mean not having an overarching goal, a sense of direction and a well thought-out concrete plan. The solution is simple but not easy, you have to think about your priorities and commit to something. By fear I mean the fear that your plan might be flawed, that you're just wasting time etc. The only way to deal with it, I believe, is to stop the inner dialogue. Just do what you set out to do. With regard to practical tools, I highly recommend the book, "Hell Week" by Bertrand Larsson (spelling may be different). I just went throught the 'hell week', and it changed me completely. It's like I grew a spine and a couple of extra balls. Try it, it's incredible.

I see no point in studying self- help. You have to do it. If it doesn't change your everyday thinking and behavior, it has no value.

First, clarify the definition of the ego, then learn about its function and structure, then ask your question again. What the guy in the video is saying makes sense. Some of the responses here don't.