Terell Kirby

Damn, why is it we can't get away with endless pleasure whilst keeping our mind free from devilry and corruption? Seems God designs us to create our own mental traps and fall prey to them at the same time. It's an ingenious design..

Thoughts on how one develops discernment? Seems to be a product of wisdom gained from developing awareness of distinctions & opposites through a set of experiences in a particular field or arena. The Trump question focuses on how good one is at distinguishing a bad faith actor/con artist from someone with honest and pure intentions. The same mechanism is at play for people who get seduced into abusive relationships or ponzi schemes for example.

Interesting article on how the Israeli defense and law enforcement uses facial recognition technology to enforce apartheid under the guise of security: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/05/israel-opt-israeli-authorities-are-using-facial-recognition-technology-to-entrench-apartheid/

The definition of intelligence is highly subjective, doesn’t span across all domains. One can be intelligent spiritually and in other domains, but completely in the dark about global politics/ideology and its effects on systems. People who voted Trump are not “evil” on some made up moral basis. But they did something abhorrent and fundamentally irresponsible by ushering a low integrity, narcissistic leader into the White House. Whether you judge that as good or bad is up to you, but it doesn’t help to be lost in fantasies about what’s going on, and how survival, corruption and ego are at play.

You can be both and still be stupid in your understanding of political systems and the nuance in which they work.

The mistake is in thinking just because someone is “enlightened” or “awake” on some spiritual level, means they have a robust/deep understanding of political systems. These two things have no relation whatsoever. What I’m realizing is it takes an enormous amount of time to study and get a deep understanding of global politics and human psychology. You can’t do that if you spend all your time on a meditation cushion or doing yoga practice 24/7.

He didn’t declare war and violence on anyone, nor accuse his oppressors of being evil. Yet he was a highly developed, highly conscious leader who mobilized people with a vision grounded in peace, harmony and compassion. Same goes for Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. You don’t always need to burn systems to the ground with war and violence to change them. Trump & MAGA feeds off conflict & division, using such tactics against them makes them stronger. The last thing the country needs is some counter revolutionary movement that sows more seeds of hate and division (fighting MAGA using MAGA tactics .. bad idea).

Framing this as a war to be fought is counter productive. The solution lies primarily in educating yourself on corruption mechanisms of the human mind (both in yourself and in others), and how it corrupts human institutions that we hold as precious. By leading with a focus on developing yourself through understanding the realities of the human struggle for survival, you place yourself in a position of self mastery and conscious leadership to effectively change systems. This is beyond partisan food fighting, and the childish need to punish others for being who they are. It helps to be both pragmatic and compassionate.

Any human survival activity must be corrupt, as human survival is not based in Truth. With that being said, corruption is not objectively “bad” in colloquial terms, and it doesn’t mean there isn’t relative survival value in being corrupt/selfish. However, your consciousness will remain limited if you are unable to see it for what it is (assuming you have an interest in raising your consciousness).

There are a variety of 12 step programs for various addictions. AA is catered to people who struggle with the inability to control their alcohol intake, and looking to abstain through practicing spiritual principles that have somewhat Christian/religious leanings. Other programs like SMART recovery are more secular and don’t place as much emphasis on labels such as ‘alcoholic’ or ‘addict’ and not rooted in following a set of spiritual principles as with most 12 step programs. In any case, there are lots of resources out there like these, including therapy and other treatment modalities. AA and other 12 step programs should have open meetings that are local in your city/town, where anyone can attend to listen and see if they resonate with the stories of others struggling with mental health and addiction. I have some experience in this arena, so feel free to DM me if I can be of some help.

Write text

@Leo Gura I really enjoyed your post about the paradoxes of knowing social systems. You did a good job laying out the challenges with trade offs of know a system from the inside vs the outside, but I would like to know what solutions you’ve come up with to balancing those trade offs. Are you still contemplating? I am facing the same dilemma with a social system that I find relative survival value through participation, but have recently awakened to its foundations being entirely based on self deception and falsehoods, despite having survival value. No one in the system knows this, and probably has very little chance of seeing the system as a system. I’m one of the lucky ones having found Actualized.org to even be conscious of such mechanisms of human survival.

Lmaoo

What is your process? 3 hour long topics on seem very daunting to have to outline. Are you more or less systematic or intuitive?

I recall somewhere on your booklist page you recommended reading with a pen and annotating, then writing out top insights from books and where to apply in life. Do you still use a pen when reading?

There’s definitely tons of self deception in this line of work

@Sandroew no one person or persons can define themselves as enlightened. It helps to be skeptical of such claims. Try to remove any legitimacy you give to human constructed ideas of enlightenment. Infinity trumps any human notion of enlightenment. And it can only be realized in your direct experience through Consciousness work.

As long as one realizes Sadhguru himself is being imagined, all is good

Lovely.

He's no match for her on a debate stage.

Key words the most. (credit for nuance) It helps me to look at spirituality and survival separate ingredients in a soup mix, we get to choose the amount of each, and it is contingent on our particular taste/preferences/goals (these change with time). We can have both at varying degrees, but it's difficult to strike the right balance. Monks who want the most out of spirituality live in caves simply because they want the most out of spirituality. Doesn't mean we should want what monks want, or if that's even right for us.

You are creating this distinction in your mind.

Nice

After watching Leo's latest video on Post Modernism and the latest blog content, I came up with some notes to track my insights on what the philosophy gets right and what it gets wrong - it's good for me to share to keep it fresh (feel free to provide feedback.. What Post modernism gets right: Most human claims to truth (if not all) is highly subjective and relative; these claims are a bi-product of social constructs that are primarily meant serve the unique, relativistic survival needs of individuals and/or group of individual (collectives). This can manifest in various institutions (government, media, entertainment, academia, business, religion, spirituality, etc), ideology/schools of thought and culture at large (ie elements of the social matrix). Values & morals are subjective and often change throughout time, what is considered true and certain in one sense can take on an entirely different meaning per historical context, new discoveries. Science and language are not reliable means to reach universal truths, which makes them limited tools that are self serving inherently (this is one of my biggest takeaways). Post-modernism is prioritizes being Construct Aware, which is highly advanced level of Ego development if one takes into account the 9 stages model. What Post modernism gets wrong: Though the vast majority of human claims to universal truth are false, there does exists and Absolute Truth that is Universal. It cannot be accessed by conventional methods such as science and language, but through a mystical experience. Post modernism as a school of thought (and that essentially what it is relative to Absolute Truth) falls victim to the same limitations of language that is apparent in the other school of thoughts that it seeks to deconstruct. Subscribing to the post modernist worldview, and creating an identity out of it-means that the philosopher has had great insight into the socially constructed nature of elements of the Modern and Pre Modern worldview, but has not taken it all the way by acknowledging the Post Modern philosophy itself as being socially constructed. Absolute Truth is what remains after the Post Modernism philosophy is successfully deconstructed and integrated; ultimately going beyond concepts and language into a direct Consciousness of God (or Infinity!).

Lmaoo