The observer

Look Leo, I'm trying to offer you a way of understanding/viewing things differently. If you think that your understanding is all-comprehensive, universal, and absolute, then I will not go on any further. I will understand that it's a survival strategy that will keep you from expanding your perspective.

I don't know. Why don't you ask it? Maybe that specific ant doesn't think at all. That's one way to look at it. There's another one, and you're not able to see it (remember I'm suggesting a stage Yellow approach). Okay. Perhaps cynicism is not the perfect word. I just realised that it's a loaded word. Let's forget about it entirely. I still stand by the rest of what I said.

It works both ways, and it goes full-circle. At some point, extreme abuse could turn into healing, as in it teaches us how to be strong and independent. And similarly, at some point, extreme healing could turn into abuse, as in too much softness makes you spoiled and vulnerable. Try to always look at things from different angles. The world is more flexible than it appears to be. Anyway, I guess the best way around this is to find balance, but how do we find our individual balance without going back and forth between the extremes? It's easy to come up with theories, but each one of us has their own delicate balance and we're all at different places. Also, you could always love and understand yourself regardless of your partner. That alone can heal you.

How do you define healthy vs. unhealthy narcissism? At which point the healthy turns into pathology? Yes, on a surface level. But I don't think that abuse is due to the attraction itself, but rather due to a bunch of reoccurring patterns for those people. And basically, all abuse boils down to boundaries and miscommunication. You can't let kids play basketball indoors. You know they're going to break lamps. If you create boundaries, they can enjoy playing outside, and you can keep your lamps safe and unbroken. Yet, without having the ability to communicate clearly and effectively, all boundaries become useless. So, it's a mixture of both. Of course, there are some rare cases where you are not even able to choose to create boundaries or communicate, like physical abuse. But that's not the general rule. It's like less than 10%. This requires special care and strong enforcement of boundaries by outer parties. We can only do our best to prevent it, but unfortunately, our best is not always good enough.

No, I see that. And if that's true, then that whole concept is illusory and should be done away with. Right? You can't call out other illusions and still keep yours. You'd only be deluding yourself. My point goes deeper. Instead of undermining thoughts and behaviours as purely driven by survival, I think it's better to acknowledge that they're driven by a higher force. Once basic survival is taken care of, the rest of thoughts and behaviours is not going to be directed at survival anymore. It's rather going to be directed towards expansion.

I get that. But I don't think it's effective to keep calling it survival at that point. Essentially, sure it can be viewed as a survival strategy. But that's not how it is perceived by the one who's doing it. When someone is perpetuating a particular pattern, the thought of life vs. death (survival) never even crosses their mind. They're aiming towards something else entirely. That's their drive. It's more accurately called a desire to expand, which does not contradict survival essentially. It's just a more nuanced term for it. The relativity of drives is a complex problem (Yellow). Cynicism is a stage Blue/Orange explanation. Therefore, it cannot work. And it will cause a lot of trouble and confusion. @Inliytened1 Please don't misquote me ?

Yeah, yeah. Or maybe you missed my point. No. 99.99% of everything I do all day long is unconsciousness, not survival. Unless you equate the two, which I think is a mistake. I've watched your series the days you posted them. And I'm pointing beyond the map you're operating from. The map is not the territory, right? If I can't have the perfect map, I still can have a more comprehensive one than cynicism. Cynicism as an explanation is stage Blue/Orange at best. Seriously, it's outdated. On the other hand, Maslow's hierarchy is Yellow, and it's way more nuanced and accurate.

You always want to narrow things down to survival. That's cynicism. It's good to have it in mind but it's not everything. The map breaks down eventually. Not all of us want to survive (I mean obviously we do but we have to take it for granted to be able to seek other things, i.e. expand). Most of us take survival for granted and we mostly focus on other things. Unless we're faced with a death situation, we're almost never concerned with the concept of death. Of course, when I say survival is not the main driver, I don't mean that we would have been seeking death instead. It's just that we don't think that much about survival itself. We don't think that much about life and death. We're so much engrossed in our lives while taking most of it for granted. And that's not a bug, that's a feature. Because if we would stay worried and constantly thinking about death, we'd never grow and evolution would stop. Thinking about death is limiting. We rather seek more freedom and expansion. Conclusion: The main drivers of human beings are expressed in Maslow's hierarchy. The lowest driver is survival, and the highest is freedom and expansion. But everyone is at a different place in life (and will always be). That makes it extremely complicated to find a common ground. Besides, expansion of some people has to occur on the expense of others' contraction. So, the game is always dynamic. And so here we are. I think my theory is more accurate and nuanced than pure cynicism. Let me hear your thoughts Leo.

@louhad If it was so simple, there wouldn't be much trouble amongst people. It's because it's so much complicated and there's no actual ground that we all share that all of our disagreements exist in the first place.

Haha! True dat! ?

I gotta side with @Etherial Cat on this. It mainly has to do with the person themselves. If I close myself and shy away from love, how can I receive it? If I don't love myself, then I will not allow anyone else to love me, because I believe deep down that I don't deserve love because it is a sin. It all starts with a judgement and ends with a judgement. These plenty of mismatching people are not actually mismatches. They sure have some similar and some different qualities. The way attraction works is not simple, I agree. But then, do you think the way you think things should work out is the best way? Do you think that your judgement is better than God's? After all, you're forgetting that you're only judging from a very small perspective. When you judge someone as great or terrible, what does it actually mean? Does it say anything about them? Or does it say much more about you? Like all belief systems, attraction theories have their limitations. The map is not the territory. Being narcissistic is not a bad thing, and there is no ideal personality to chase. These subtle judgements run our lives, and potentially ruin them too. Let me know if you want to discuss more about this. I would be more than happy to.

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He does seem open but doesn't know how to properly be. And still, he doesn't seem to be able to follow the pointers on how to be so. I have no experience in how to successfully communicate in such cases. It's certainly difficult for both sides. I guess there needs to be at least a little bit of love/trust from the learning side, and a lot of patience from the teaching side.

@JohnD I said I talked bullshit. And now I also admit that I am ignorant.

That's actually a very good question! The problem with answering it, though, is that we assume that the hierarchy of levels of consciousness is a static structure. Which makes us assume that it can only be possible to achieve higher levels by reducing lower levels. But that's not how it works. Consciousness works in a transcendent integrative way. It builds higher levels on top of the lower ones. There cannot be high consciousness without low consciousness. So, if you demonise low consciousness, you will not reach higher levels. Complexity arises from simplicity by making the simple go into the subconscious mind (unconsciousness, low levels of consciousness) by repetition. The conscious mind is slow and cannot handle complexities so well. It has to always proxy processes down to the subconscious mind. Otherwise, no learning or evolution could ever occur. There's much depth to this but I would like to leave it at that for you to continue the contemplation on your own because you seem like the kind of person who loves deep contemplation.

@cetus I think he's trying his best and I believe we've all been there. We don't know what we don't know. Isn't that the whole problem in a nutshell?

@Florian I talk bullshit, that's it.

It is a relative term describing the most valuable outcome for spiritual seekers. From another relative perspective, it can be viewed as insanity, like for example from the materialistic paradigm. That would be an appearance of something desirable for the majority of spiritual seekers. It does not necessarily have to produce any results. Appearance is not actuality. And both are subject to grace.

They still need to be lucky. The number one most important factor is grace, and it's not distributed equally, otherwise it wouldn't be grace. You could hit a wall a thousand times without making a crack. And then suddenly someone else comes and the wall falls down immediately. There are no rules (more accurately, there are, but they're beyond the mind).

@Someone here Just so you don't limit yourself. It's possible to answer all your questions without psychedelics. It helps to ask questions sometimes outwardly, but the most juice comes out of deep contemplations on your own, drug-free or not.

Imaginary. Boundless. Infinite. Creative. Mysterious. All of that shares one same insight; that you don't exist as a someone behind the eyes.

It's way more fruitful to ask the questions and try to answer them for yourself. All answers are already inside of you. And sorry, was trying to lighten the mood a little bit since we've had multiple discussions I thought you're my friend and you'd take it lightly.

No. Life, obviously, is a physical world that we're born into and it has obvious rules and qualities that follow a certain logic. There's nothing mysterious about life. We have it all figured out, or let's be more honest, we have most of it figured out, thanks to science which will definitely figure out the rest in the near future. I don't have any.

You're obviously wrong! Two bottles of 5-Meo milk per day for the first years ought to be it. ?

Made a few changes in account settings. Added birthday, month, and year. Added location; city and country. Changed the "about me" quote. And turned on the "recently visited" monitor. 9 days left of Ramadan and my streak is still running. All almost completely effortless. My brother broke yesterday. He gave up the challenge. He could not take it anymore. The suffering was just too much for him. I understand where he's coming from. He perceives fasting as a pointless practice. Only if he could have a little faith. He told me he's at the other end of whatever that thing called "faith" is. Being present and authentic is good and it can help, but it's not enough. A shift in the subconscious mind needs to take place. Perception has to shift focus towards the full half of the glass. I might talk more about that later.