Hi everyone. I come to you with my most ambitious list of books yet.
How so you might ask? Because this is the condensed version, as short as I could manage without excluding the essential works.

Description: A condensed list of thoroughly vetted critically-acclaimed books that convey essential real-world knowledge to sort out ourselves, and the world.
Aim: To transfer practical, intelligent, hard-to-find real-world knowledge and lived experience of highly learned people from nearly every practical domain, from all over the globe. To educate the masses.
What we think, believe, say, and do matters. To wield the real-world knowledge of our predecessors is our birthright. To figure ourselves out carries weight, and it is a responsibility that we owe to ourselves, each other, and the world. Attached: 
An Image previewing the sections (content headings) The full .pdf version (2.5MB; 16 pages) The full online version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T6FTeGDgoDFgdJrItXbXc09zhngY-SGc/view?usp=sharing Thank you for you attention. Now the floor is yours.
As usual your positive and/or critical input is always welcome .
(P.S. This is the z-library version https://b-ok.xyz/book/19284799/81762c)
Sources of Essential Knowledge by Lukares.pdf

Thanks so much for sharing, @Loving Radiance! I just registered for an Actualized forum account so I could say thank you ?. 
I'm happy you were able to connect the topics I cover on the site with Spiral Dynamics / Integral Theory stages even though I don't explicitly mention them.
I'm actually working on a Premium post that attempts to connect my own life experience over the last 6+ years (Sloww's stages) with Ego Development Theory (EDT's stages).
All the best,
Kyle Kowalski (Founder, Sloww)

I found this incredibly useful guided meditation from Dan Brown—
 I can't find anything else similar. Any recommendations? 

If you're looking for high consciousness sci-fi / fantasy, I'd highly recommend Ursula K Le Guinn
If you're looking for sword fights you won't find it in her work, but if using fantasy as a unique lense to explore sociological and philosophical ideas, Le Guinn is one of the best.

Nobody is taking it seriously as long as Las Vegas is still allowed to exist. How much water is needed to sustain a population of 2.4 million people, and their lawns, pets, and the extravagant tourist attractions there? All the water comes from an artificial lake that would not be there without the human ingenuity needed to build a dam. It’s the most glaring example of humanity not caring. It’s the first domino that needs to fall if the global community wakes up to this issue of water sustainability.

Of late, it seems that the society we live in is almost automated like a highly efficent machine. Almost a slot machine as such that it is rigged against you, as you insert more money into it, the owners of the slot machine get richer and richer, while the player loses all his money and then goes off to work to get more money to play the put more money into this slot machine, and this person feels like it has to play this game or he will end up miserable.
Let me brake the system down to how basics. Here is the mediocre life
1.You are born into the world.
2. You are named, you identify yourself as this name that has been given to you.
3 . You begin to grasp an understanding of the world which you beleive is true, you are easily influenced
4. You are taken to a Pre-School where you interact with others like you.
5. Parents discpline you.
6.You start asking questions lots of them, we are given answers to them which we beleive without qestioning.
7. Our emotions conflict with what we have been taught.
8 . We are sent to Primary/Elementry school where we are discplined even more, where we are forced to attend by law or heavy punishment will occur.You learn to fear authority and acceptance of it.
9.Tests are introduced to us, you are tested constantly.
10.You are taken to secondary school/ high school which you a forced to attend by law.
Here you are discplined and taught at a higher standard and higher exspectations
You begin to question the system,you are quickly told you are wrong by everyone surrounding you and made beleive that you are is whata wrong.
You are tested heavily and throughly and a huge emphasis on grades,you are punished if you receive bad grades, both by parents and school staff.
11. You finish your examinations thats get you "Points" which can get you into colleges and get certain courses in that college. 
12. You get into a college  and take a course you are interested in, or family members advised you to take.
13.You may or may not get a degree.
14. A job fair is hosted all sorta of corpartions a recruiting and they are lookimg for specfic kind people with certain skill sets.
 
15. You are employed you start your job,you have mixed feelings about your job you work for years to earn enough money to do what you desire.
16. You proabably have fallen in love and have a spouse/girlfriend/wife.
17 . You buy a mortgage for your house.
18 .You have children.
19 . You work, work,work to pay off mortgage
20 . Your kids to school, you tell the that their schooldays are the best days of there lives. You wan them to be better then  yourslef seeing you are miserable/ mediocre..
21. You kids get jobs.
22 . You retire
23. You enjoy retirement.
24. Your near death feeling unfullfilled and with regrets, without really knowing why.
25 . We die
26.?????
Thats the life of the majority.
Ive noticed this , and theres something very fishy going on to say the least. And I dont like it.
Its like farming, but instead of killing the animal, they are using the animals as a labour force to make  the farmers who the animals rich pricks who do little work.
 I dont want this to be me.
I cant stop this system, so its all ready a " If you cant beat em, join em scenario" where in I cant beat the system, so to survive in the system I have to earn income which can only obtained by working with the system. ( Illegal shit will get you locked up for decades).
Its corrupt! And everyone is unconcious of it!
The thing is, How am I supposed to avoid like becoming the rest of the sheep?
 
 

Red = power / freedom
Blue = stability / safety
Orange = abundance
Green = better world / peace
Yellow = perfection / optimal order
Turquoise = love
 
 

Intrinsic Health is the desire to pursue health primarily for its own sake or its immediate benefits, rather than for some alternative outcome (like increased lifespan, disease prevention etc.). This desire is something that has to be developed, and some of it can be worked on, and some of it is more up to chance (biology, happenstance). This development is something I've discovered within myself and which is a culmination of all my deepest values and intuitions about life. If all of this seems too unrealistic or utopian for you to accept, I'm telling you that it's possible.
 
I will present two main factors that I think contribute to Intrinsic Health (IH) and how implementing both (to the degree that is possible) will lead to highly synergistic effects:
1. Being (foundational factors; the mystical experience).
2. Meaning (practical factors; cognitive, emotional and behavioral patterns).
 

 
First, what is the alternative to Intrinsic Health? I like to think of Intrinsic Health as in many ways the opposite of hedonism. Your sense of pleasure is derived from your most natural baseline state of existence, not some fluctuating level of extreme activation or excitation. The benefit to Intrinsic Health is therefore that it's extremely stable and self-sustaining. It works with its natural bodily functions (homeostasis) rather than against them, and I'll also claim that it is not only beneficial for optimizing functioning, but that it's the very basis for a high-functioning existence.
 
Being
Being is something that is arguably the most crucial aspect to this (at least in my experience), as it lays the foundation for how the immediate benefits of health is experienced on a purely phenomenological level. The ability to investigate your direct experience through feeling, both on an intuitive level and a more bodily level, prior to thought, will allow you to tap into the organic feelings that is produced by healthy food and physical exercise, and it allows you to more readily identify the mechanism of craving unhealthy foods and other behaviors, namely thought itself. In other words, Being both establishes the connection to Intrinsic Health and actively maintains it. However, when it comes to the more practical aspect of maintaining this connection, there are certain so-called vital patterns of cognition, emotion and behavior that are highly beneficial, if not required (some of which can also induce the mystical experience, e.g. a meditation habit), and this is directly tied to the concept of meaning.
 
Meaning
Meaning is at the most fundamental level an expression of goal-oriented behavior. Whether you're an amoeba looking for food, or a monkey displaying aggression, or a human reading a book, it's all fundamentally about the same thing: engaging in behavior that benefits survival. The amoeba's movement through the environment, the monkey's direction of emotional energy towards a target, and the human orienting him or herself through a narrative, are all expressions of meaning, and the definition of a healthy organism is one that is able to engage in this type of meaningful behavior in a successful manner. 
 
An amoeba that isn't able to move in just the right way to accurately locate food will have its health compromised and eventually die. A monkey that is not able to express its emotions in an appropriate manner will likewise have its health and survival compromised, and a human that is not able to ground their life in a higher-order framework of meaning (based on symbolic thought, language and narrative) will also have their health and survival compromised.
 
Cognitive emotion regulation
Like monkeys, humans need adequate cognitive emotion regulation patterns, and you can roughly divide this into two main styles: externalizing and internalizing style. The externalizing style most accurately represents the evolutionary function of emotions, and generally speaking it's therefore the most vital/healthy style (the exception is when it happens at the level of pathology, for example some personality disorders, e.g. parts of Cluster B). Emotions exist to serve a purpose, and it's to direct attention and energy towards some task in the environment (in a meaningful way). Therefore, if you experience an emotion like say anger, what you're supposed to do from a natural standpoint is to act on that emotion, which could be telling somebody that what they did is not OK, or expressing some disagreement, or establishing boundaries.
 
When this is done correctly, the emotion subsides rather quickly and the physiological activation and associated stress and thoughts about the situation will disappear. On the other hand, if you don't do this and instead repress the emotion and pull the energy inwards (internalizing style), you will create endless cycles of mental anguish and physical unwellness, which is generally not healthy. I say "generally" because there are times where internalizing an emotion is socially appropriate. It's rather when it's done compulsively and not in a skillful way, or in a way that is not meaningful, that you will severely compromise your health. Therefore, learning to externalize emotions when that is the appropriate thing to do (and internalizing when that is appropriate) is crucial for establishing a connection to Intrinsic Health. I severely underestimated the importance of this in my life even many years after discovering meditation, and it held me back in so many ways that I can't even begin to tell you about. I therefore cannot stress enough how important this is.
 
Higher-order meaning
The emotional aspect is also tied to navigating higher-order frameworks of meaning, namely daily habits, work ethic, and life purpose. Just like the most basic aspects of life, this aspect needs to have a certain streamlined and less cyclical nature to it for it to have any true effect on your health.
 
When it comes to daily habits, the most foundational, simplest and maybe obvious one is to take notes or make a schedule. Whenever your mind starts bothering you about something you have to do, that is meaning knocking on your door: it has an emotional component that tries to direct attention and energy towards a task, and it even has informational content with instructions on how to do it (the content of the thought itself). This is an amazing technology that you were given by evolution, and the only mistake is to ignore it. The only reason you ignore it is because you don't have a good strategy to deal with it in the moment. Now, I'm saying that the best thing you can do is to write it down. You don't even have to specify "when" or "how" you'll do it (although that is also good): simply by writing it down with the intention that you will do the thing, the job is essentially done. Your mind stops worrying about it. You've eliminated the cyclical patterns of meaningless mental noise, and this is again crucial to maintaining Intrinsic Health. Make notes about whatever your mind thinks is worth spending time reminding you about. It can be anything from shopping ideas, plans for the week, work assignments, creative ideas, life purpose etc.
 
This streamlined thinking should also be applied to your work ethic. If you've decided that you're going to follow a work schedule, your only job is to stick to that schedule. If you don't, your mind will start telling you that you should, and this leads to cyclical mental anguish, which again severs ties to optimal health. If you value your mental clarity, if your value your goals, and if you value your physical well-being, you will avoid cheating on your work ethic at all costs. Same with life purpose. If you don't find a life purpose and your mind keeps bothering you about the fact that your life has no meaning and that you're not moving towards any higher-order goal, then you better start listening to what your mind is telling you. Your mind is really smart and you should listen to it more often. I'm not saying finding a life purpose is easy, but never ever pretend like it's not important for your health. Lack of higher-order meaning is one of the biggest problems that you have to solve if you value your mental and physical health and well-being.
 
Summary and synthesis
To tie this back to Being, having a daily habit like a meditation habit, outsourcing mental activity by writing notes, not terrorizing yourself by cheating on your work schedule, and figuring out a trajectory for your life, directly feeds back into your ability to feel alive, to enjoy having a functioning body that is not aching, to enjoy having a mind that is not cluttered with useless noise and that is able to think amazing things. All of this is intricately tied together into one holistic mesh, which is why your approach to achieving Intrinsic Health should be holistic as well, meaning you will not ignore anything that your conscience tells you to do. Your conscience is the divine spirit that tries to guide you towards ever higher levels of love. Meaning is the way you manifest your conscience in your daily life, and Being is how you experience the fruits of all that.

@Manusia 
 
In order to learn the language, you have to interact with it as much as possible, for example by watching this YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/EasyGerman
 
I personally use "Duolingo" and "Clozemaster" every day to learn languages, other people like to use vocabulary lists on "Anki".
If you just play Duolingo for half an hour a day for a couple of months your German will already be good enough for most basic interactions (restaurant, supermarket, asking for directions etc.). It is actually fairly easy to get to an A1/A2 level in German, especially if you speak English already. It's just almost impossible to get to C2 / Native speaker level bc there are many small mistakes you can do. But they don't really matter, people will understand you just fine. Good Luck!

Hey folks,
I can't find out what he did prior to founding the consilience project. I know he studied Mathematics and Counseling psychology, but I don't know what work experiences he has, how he finances himself (he can't be making a lot of money with his consilience project).
It's inspiring to me to study the path of people who have very meaningful work and understand how they managed financing themselves, while doing what they love.
If you guys know something, please share. 

Hey everybody.
I’ve joined very recently and as a first contribution I’m sharing this book list that that’s been in the works for 2 years and counting. 
I’ve organised it into sections, covering topics that are central (in my opinion) to self-actualisation in a world that misleads us at every turn. I list a wide variety of critical books on topics as different as Health, Accomplishment, Evolutionary Psych, Contentious History, etc.. 
*Full Table of Contents attached in image format*

Alas, here’s my full list made available using google docs publish feature:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTDWt6DuSrAkEQf32smo_np_7oJVVvyqXsDR2hL6Wv3OXMVTaKxK9MKhtredKxusoj7L03WsBVyhQ_c/pub
Anything familiar? Anything you’re happy / unhappy to see featured? Anything you’re surprised to see? Any proposed additions?
All is welcome.
NB: I have not read all these books, more like 20%, but rest assured each has been vetted / researched at the best of my ability.

https://archive.org/details/Dajjal_And_illuminati
 
if u watch the above video series , u will stop watching movies. it made me stop watching movies.

As I'm sure anyone who has studied spiral dynamics would agree, our society is largely stuck in tier 1 - mostly blue, orange, and green.  And the mutual loathing that has arisen between the factions is having a very negative impact on society.  If tier 2 people had control of the world, the COVID pandemic would already be over.  If tier 2 people had control of the world, global warming would still probably be an issue, but much less of one.  If tier 2 people had control of the world, the education system would be teaching kids how to think for themselves, how to question everything (i.e. see the world objectively), and preparing them for success in the real world instead of manufacturing wage slaves via rote memorization and a hive mind mentality.
I believe that if a stage yellow political think tank could be orchestrated, it would have the potential to change the world.  (I say stage yellow even though turquoise is also tier 2 because once a person reaches turquoise, they probably have less than no interest in such things as politics).  But back to the point, similar to the way that Don Beck and his students tried and succeeded to some degree to improve relations between Israel and Palestine (until financial issues and geopolitical complexities derailed their efforts), I believe a similar holistic approach could be taken to solve much of the world's problems (regarding healthcare, the economy, education, climate change, etc.) and to create a better world.
The million dollar question is how would one even begin to put together such a think tank and sustain it long enough for it to positively impact society?  What form would this think tank take?  A new political party?  A non-profit organization?  Is such a solution untenable due to the never-ending roadblocks and opposition it would face from tier 1 stages?  Anyone with thoughts or comments feel free to chime in.

There is a nice part in the following paper which touches on Tier 2 thinking but from a different models' perspective:
"Stage 5/6 constitutes a radically new perspective. It can look at the whole paradigm of constructive developmental theory, compare it to other psychological theories and see both their similarities and differences, their benefits and limitations. It is thus a stage of differentiation from the previously held view of reality and meaning making. Stage 5/6 embraces the fundamental uncertainty about knowing and shows a greater and greater capacity to see through our human yearning for meaning and wholeness.
People at this form of Stage 5/6 often experience great existential tension as there is now really no ground to stand on, no single reality to observe from multiple perspectives. Instead, there are multiple realities created by humans in different cultures and languages. All theories are seen for what they are: ego’s attempts to create order, certainty, and predictability. While there can be tremendous suffering associated with seeing through the games our minds play, the pain can be appreciated and indeed embraced as a portal to deeper connection and fuller being."
 
https://integral-review.org/issues/vol_14_no_1_cook-greuter_construct_aware_stage_and_the_fool_archetype.pdf

Apologies if this is comes across as a bit basic, but here is how I would frame how to understand epistemology for a beginner:
As a ground for epistemology, it's hugely helpful to have at least some basic grounding in a few of the more important paradigms within philosophy. These would include:
Empericism & Rationalism Physicalism & Idealism Dualism & Monism An intro to philosophy book or video series on YouTube worth it's salt should touch upon all of these 
In addition, it's also helpful to be able to have a working understanding of some basic concepts:
Epistemology is an investigation of how we can come to know things Ontology is an investigation of what actually exists Metaphysics is an investigation of the underlying Being of Reality. (As to the last point, it's worth making a clear distinction between metaphysics and science, as the two tend to get confused. The distinction is this: Science asks how Reality behaves, metaphysics asks what Reality is.)
The reason why it's helpful to know these things is that they're going to be useful for understanding paradigms. A paradigm is a structured, cohesive schema for looking at particular aspects of the world.
The reason that paradigms are important to epistemology is that what is and isn't considered true, valid, and relevant is in almost all cases going to be filtered through the specific set of paradigms that one is viewing the world through.
And the reason that this matters is that an understanding of how paradigms function is going to be interlinked with your ability to View the world through different perspectives, and to be able to compare and contrast different perspectives.
For a solid specific demonstration of how paradigms work, something like Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a really good resource.

I recentely used this https://www.amazon.de/Success-Journal-Serious-Blue-Productivity/dp/1631066641 it helped me a lot to achieve my goals and work a lot without feeling that I burn-out. I find myself consistenly unable to hit all of the 5 goals from the life purpose course, yet this one really helped me. Any tools you can use for a longer time to reach goals. I read some theory behind it, yet never found a proper tool. Mostly I write it down and track it nowadays, make aribitary dead lines on my calendar and measure the progress at best. I don't do all of this consistently, yet this really helped me. Look at my LP goals daily. 

The LP goals are basically the higher vision goals. I do have a vision board. (no dreamboard yet ) and I visualize my current goals. Yet, Istill don't take daily action tracking has helped me to stay consistent over a weekly basis mostly or monthly. Yet, some goals require more effort on a daily basis more. 

The book/tool above helped the most till now when it comes to taking consistent action on a daily basis, what has helped you the most to take consistent action on a daily basis to reach and achieve your goals?

I took 200 mcg a few minutes ago and my memory hit me like a truck! 
Suddenly there's clarity and improved memory! 
Just wanted to share my excitement, this really works.

🍄 Actualized.org on Psychedelics 🍄
• Blog post on How To Research Psychedelics.
• PsychonauntWiki is a good resource for research.
• VIDEO:  How To Plug Psychedelics - Nov 2018 - (Summary is here)
 
            Must Watch Episodes
Ep 268. How To Use Psychedelics For Personal Development. (Summary)
Ep 434. How Psychedelics Work - Making Sense Of Psychedelics.
Ep 483. The Top Dangers Of Using Psychedelics. (Summary)
 
            Substance Reports
Ep 267.  Magic Mushrooms:  The Amazing Power Of Psychedelics - Leo Does Magic Psilocybin Mushrooms!
Ep 275.  5-MeO-DMT:  5-MeO-DMT - The Magic Pill To Enlightenment & God.  (Summary)
Ep 298.  AL-LAD:  Trip Report - A Powerful Tool For Consciousness Work.  (Summary)
Ep 312.  2C-B:  Experiencing Physical Death.
Ep 492.  5-MeO-MALT:  Introducing The Other God Molecule.  (Summary)
Ep 507.  Ketamine:  Lessons From Ketamine - Is Ketamine Useful For Spirituality?
Blog Video. DPT:  The Other God Molecule.  (Summary)
Blog Video. Salvia:  What it’s Like to Smoke Salvia Divinorum.
            (Leo says Salvia is very dangerous and does not recommend doing it)
 
            Blog Posts: Safety and Psychedelics  ⛑️
• The Top Dangers Of Using Psychedelics - Oct 2017
• The Antidote For Pre-Trip Anxiety - Aug 2017
• 5-MeO-Always On An Empty Stomach - May 2017
• No Trip Sitters - May 2017
• Why You Should Never Do Salvia (6 mins) - Aug 2017
 
            Forum Threads
• The Ketamine and Dissociatives Mega-Thread
• The 5-MeO-DMT Mega-Thread
• The N,N-DMT Mega-Thread
• The 5-MeO-MALT Mega-Thread
• The DPT Mega-Thread
• The Trip Reports Mega-Thread
 
• Psychedelics Safety and Protocols Mega Thread
• Psychedelics Informational Resources
• Psychedelic Research Mega-Thread
• Best Psychedelic Trip Music Mega-Thread
• Psychedelic Memes Mega-Thread
 
            Enlightenment & Psychedelics Episodes 🤯
      • Almost every episode in the Enlightenment section of Leo’s Blog Videos.
Ep 283. Interview With Martin Ball - Using 5-MeO-DMT To Become Enlightened
Ep 347. Enlightenment Experience Explanation & Key Lessons.  (Summary) (a response to ep 346)
Ep 437. Outrageous Experiments In Consciousness - 30 Awakenings In 30 Days.  (Summary)
Ep 495. Leo's Worst Bad Trips - Psychedelics Gone Wrong
Viewer Compilation 🥳: Incredible, Powerful Concepts on Life & 5-MeO-DMT
Blog Post and Video on Mapping Consciousness With High Dose LSD
 
            Tripping in Real Time Episodes
Ep 346. Enlightenment Experience Happening In Real Time - LIVE! 🛋️
Ep 431. Total Awakening Live In Real Time - Part 1. 📦
Ep 432. Total Awakening Live In Real Time - Part 2. 🛋️
 
            Misc Episodes
Ep 329. Correcting The Stigma Of Psychedelics - Part 1.
Ep 331. Correcting The Stigma Of Psychedelics - Part 2.
 
More Blog Posts on Psychedelics
            Trip Report 🧳
Jun 2017:    Psychedelic Visions
Jul 2017:    More Serious Than You Ever Imagined (note) 🤯
Sep 2018:  Salvia Trip Report
Jun 2019:   Dissecting The Psychedelic Experience 👽
Jun 2019:   Who Are The Machine Elves? 👽
 
            Research 🔬
Feb 2017:    Alexander Shulgin Documentary - Psychedelics Chemist (note)
Oct 2018:    Psychedelic Receptors 📄 🧷
Mar 2018:   Breaking Convention YT Channel 🤯
Mar 2018:   The Origins Of Mind—Thomas Ray 🤯
Aug 2019:   Psilocybin & Personality Change (note) ⁉️
Aug 2019:   Microdosing Research ⁉️
Jul 2020:     Legal MDMA Therapy Almost Here! (note)
Jan 2021:    Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences 🤯
Jul 2021:     Ketamine Klinic (note)
 
            Miscellaneous
Jan 2017:    Drunk On Mushrooms
Feb 2017:   The Despicable War On Drugs
Mar 2018:   Dark Room Retreats & 5-MeO-DMT
Mar 2018:   A Society Built On Psychedelics—Bwiti Tribe
Sep 2018:   Your Brain On LSD
May 2019:  Denver Decriminalizes Mushrooms
Apr 2020:   Timothy Leary (note)

I'm approximately 10 pages into this book and you know when something is so good you have to go back and read the page again because it's unbelievably insightful. Well, that X10. Highly recommended. Changing my life already. 
'Feel the fear and do it anyway'- Susan Jeffers 
 

found the mother lode. Really really really high quality summaries.
 
 

Several steps and methods are given, from beginner to advanced. Clear and precise Instruction is given by  Swami Tadatmananda , an ordained monk in the Advaita tradition. Highly recommended if you are new to meditation, or are looking to expand into more advanced practices. Posted a few examples below. Here's  Link to full playlist
 
Chapter 2: Turning Within
Pranayama: Breath Control
Calming the Nerves  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgiz4mijG_8&t=0s
Nadi Shodhana https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgiz4mijG_8&t=0s
Ujjayi Pranayama https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqH2GuyzyRg&t=0s

Chapter 3: Concentration
Trataka Gazing  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlfqHSDoFXI&t=0s
Bhramari Pranayama  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbgS99egOjs&t=0s
Developing Your Concentration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5mrwZn2_OA&t=0s
Overcoming Associative Thinking  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB7qfBSMQr4&t=0s

Chapter 4: Mantra Japa
Advanced Meditation

A Zen Master lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain.
One evening, while he was away, a thief sneaked into the hut only to find there was nothing in it to steal. The Zen Master returned and found him.
“You have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.” 
The thief was bewildered, but he took the clothes and ran away. He thought:
'What a buffoon. At least, I got away with these clothes.'
The Master sat naked, watching the moon.
“Poor fellow,” he mused, ” I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”
-----
A solid understanding of systems theory + a practical spiritual integration of its primary principles is essential for the investigation of truth. In fact, for a life dedicated to greater understanding, fulfillment and happiness at the deepest level.
As you view reality through the lens of systems theory, you'll see avenues you have yet to explore in your spiritual journey. It is a forever open feedback channel that is left within the system until your last breath.
Spoiler Alert: Your entire mind/body system and reality structure is expressed within the core principles of systems theory.
Here are some of my explorations and studies into systems theory.
The Essence of Systems Theory
1- Understand the Key Harmony of the System
Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves.
If it’s a piece of music or a whitewater rapid or a fluctuation in a commodity price, study its beat. If it’s a social system, watch it work. Learn its history. Ask people who’ve been around a long time to tell you what has happened. 
This guideline is deceptively simple. Until you make it a practice, you won’t believe how many wrong turns it helps you avoid. Starting with the behavior of the system forces you to focus on facts, not theories. It keeps you from falling too quickly into your own beliefs or misconceptions, or those of others.
It’s amazing how many misconceptions there can be. People will swear that rainfall is decreasing, say, but when you look at the data, you find that what is really happening is that variability is increasing—the droughts are deeper, but the floods are greater too.
It’s especially interesting to watch how the various elements in the system do or do not vary together. Watching what really happens, instead of listening to peoples’ theories of what happens, can explode many careless causal hypotheses.
Every selectman in the state of New Hampshire seems to be positive that growth in a town will lower taxes, but if you plot growth rates against tax rates, you find a scatter as random as the stars in a New Hampshire winter sky. There is no discernible relationship at all.
Starting with the behavior of the system directs one’s thoughts to dynamic, not static, analysis—not only to “What’s wrong?” but also to “How did we get there?” “What other behavior modes are possible?” “If we don’t change direction, where are we going to end up?”
And looking to the strengths of the system, one can ask “What’s working well here?”
Starting with the history of several variables plotted together begins to suggest not only what elements are in the system, but how they might be interconnected.
And finally, starting with history discourages the common and distracting tendency we all have to define a problem not by the system’s actual behavior, but by the lack of our favorite solution.  - The problem is, we need to find more oil. The problem is, we need to ban abortion. The problem is, we don’t have enough salesmen. The problem is, how can we attract more growth to this town?
Listen to any discussion, in your family or a committee meeting at work or among the pundits in the media, and watch people leap to solutions, usually solutions in “predict, control, or impose your will” mode, without having paid any attention to what the system is doing and why it’s doing it.
2- Explore Your Mental Models Clearly (After Direct Experience)
When we draw structural diagrams and then write equations, we are forced to make our assumptions visible and to express them with rigor. We have to put every one of our assumptions about the system out where others (and we ourselves) can see them.
Our models have to be complete, and they have to add up, and they have to be consistent. Our assumptions can no longer slide around (mental models are very slippery), assuming one thing for purposes of one discussion and something else contradictory for purposes of the next discussion.
You don’t have to put forth your mental model with diagrams and equations, although doing so is a good practice. The more you do that, in any form, the clearer your thinking will become, the faster you will admit your uncertainties and correct your mistakes, and the more flexible you will learn to be.
Mental flexibility—the willingness to redraw boundaries, to notice that a system has shifted into a new mode, to see how to redesign structure—is a necessity when you live in a world of flexible systems.
3- Respect Data & Information Channels
Information (both conceptual and non-conceptual) holds systems in harmony whereas delayed, biased, scattered, corrupted or missing data can make feedback loops malfunction.
For instance, decision makers can’t respond to information they don’t have, can’t respond accurately to information that is inaccurate, and can’t respond in a timely way to information that is late. I would guess that most of what goes wrong in systems goes wrong because of biased, late, or missing information.
If I could, I would add an eleventh commandment to the first ten: Thou shalt not distort, delay, or withhold information.
You can drive a system crazy by muddying its information streams. You can make a system work better with surprising ease if you can give it more timely, more accurate, more complete information.
4 - Attend to What is Important, Not What is Immediately Perceivable and Quantifiable
Our culture, obsessed with numbers, has given us the idea that what we can measure is more important than what we can’t measure. Think about that for a minute. It means that we make quantity more important than quality. 
If quantity forms the goals of our feedback loops, if quantity is the center of our attention and language and institutions, if we motivate ourselves, rate ourselves, and reward ourselves on our ability to produce quantity, then quantity will be the result.
You can look around and make up your own mind about whether quantity or quality is the outstanding characteristic of the world in which you live.
Pretending that something doesn’t exist if it’s hard to quantify leads to faulty models. You’ve already seen the system trap that comes from setting goals around what is easily measured, rather than around what is important.
So don’t fall into that trap. Human beings have been endowed not only with the ability to count, but also with the ability to assess quality.
Be a quality detector. Be a walking, noisy Geiger counter that registers the presence or absence of quality.
No one can quite define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value.
But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t directly experience and radiate them, if we dont point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist within the social reality the system is based on.
5- Generate Feedback Policies Within Feedback Loops
President Jimmy Carter had an unusual ability to think in feedback terms and to make feedback policies. Unfortunately, he had a hard time explaining them to a press and public that didn’t understand feedback. Let me explain:
Carter was trying to deal with a flood of illegal immigrants from Mexico. He suggested that nothing could be done about that immigration as long as there was a great gap in opportunity and living standards between the United States and Mexico. Rather than spending money on border guards and barriers, he said, we should spend money helping to build the Mexican economy, and we should continue to do so until the immigration stopped.
That never happened. This is a failure of feedback policy.
You can imagine why a dynamic, self-adjusting feedback system cannot be governed by a static, unbending policy.
It’s easier, more effective, and usually much cheaper to design policies that change depending on the state of the system.
Especially where there are great uncertainties, the best policies not only contain feedback loops, but meta-feedback loops—loops that alter, correct, and expand loops. These are policies that design learning into the management process.
6- Value the Good of the Whole
Remember that hierarchies exist to serve the bottom layers, not the top.
Don’t maximize parts of systems or subsystems while ignoring the whole. Don’t, as Kenneth Boulding once said, go to great trouble to optimize something that never should be done at all.
Aim to enhance total systems properties, such as growth, stability, diversity, resilience, and sustainability—whether they are easily measured or not.
7- Listen to the Wisdom of the System
Aid and encourage the forces and structures that help the system run itself.
Notice how many of those forces and structures are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Don’t be an unthinking intervenor and destroy the system’s own self-maintenance capacities.
Before you charge in to make things better, pay attention to the value of what’s already there.
Get a feel for what to play with and what to allow its maturation process to unfold at its own pace.
8- Locate Responsibility Within the System & Open its Feedback Channels
That’s a guideline both for analysis and design. In analysis, it means looking for the ways the system creates its own behavior.
Do pay attention to the triggering events, the outside influences that bring forth one kind of behavior from the system rather than another. Sometimes those outside events can be controlled (as in reducing the pathogens in drinking water to keep down incidences of infectious disease). But sometimes they can’t.
You need to accept that.
And sometimes blaming or trying to control the outside influence blinds one to the easier task of increasing responsibility within the system.
“Intrinsic responsibility” means that the system is designed to send feedback about the consequences of decision making directly and quickly and compellingly to the decision makers.
In a sense, the pilot of a plane rides in the front of the plane, that pilot is intrinsically responsible. He or she will experience directly the consequences of his or her decisions.
Designing a system for intrinsic responsibility could mean, for example, requiring all towns or companies that emit wastewater into a stream to place their intake pipes downstream from their outflow pipe. It could mean that neither insurance companies nor public funds should pay for medical costs resulting from smoking or from accidents in which a motorcycle rider didn’t wear a helmet or a car rider didn’t fasten the seat belt
A great deal of responsibility was lost when rulers of a nation who declared war were no longer expected to lead the troops into battle. 
These few examples are enough to get you thinking about how little our current culture has come to look for responsibility within the system that generates an action, and how poorly we design systems to experience the consequences of their actions.
9- Always Stay a Student
Systems thinking has taught me to trust my intuition more and my figuring- out rationality less, to lean on both as much as I can, but still to be prepared for surprises.
Working with systems, on the computer, in nature, among people, in organizations, constantly reminds me of how incomplete my mental models are, how complex the world is, and how much I don’t know.
That’s hard. It means making mistakes and, worse, admitting them. It means what psychologist Don Michael calls “error-embracing.” It takes a lot of courage to embrace your errors
10- Embrace Complexity
Let’s face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity and uniformity.
That’s what makes the world interesting, and that’s what makes it beautiful.
There’s something within the human mind that is attracted to straight lines and not curves, to whole numbers and not fractions, to uniformity and not diversity, and to certainties and not mystery.
But there is something else within us that has the opposite set of tendencies, since we ourselves evolved out of and are shaped by and structured as complex feedback systems.
Only a part of us, a part that has emerged recently, designs buildings as boxes with uncompromising straight lines and flat surfaces.
Another part of us recognizes instinctively that nature designs in fractals, with intriguing detail on every scale from the microscopic to the macroscopic. That part of us makes Gothic cathedrals and Persian carpets, symphonies and novels, Mardi Gras costumes and artificial intelligence programs, all with embellishments almost as complex as the ones we find in the world around us.
We can, and some of us do, celebrate and encourage self-organization, disorder, variety, and diversity. Some of us even make a conscious moral commitment of doing so.
11- Expand the Time Axiom
One of the worst ideas humanity ever had was the interest rate, which led to the further ideas of payback periods and discount rates, all of which provide a rational, quantitative excuse for ignoring the long term.
The official time horizon of industrial society doesn’t extend beyond what will happen after the next election or beyond the payback period of current investments.
Don't make the same mistake.
In a strict systems sense, there is no long term and short-term distinction.
Phenomena at different time-scales are nested within each other.
Actions taken now have some immediate effects and some that radiate out for decades to come. We experience now the consequences of actions set in motion yesterday and decades ago and centuries ago.
The couplings between very fast processes and very slow ones are sometimes strong, sometimes weak. When the slow ones dominate, nothing seems to be happening; when the fast ones take over, things happen with breathtaking speed.
Systems are always coupling and uncoupling the large and the small, the fast and the slow.
When you’re walking along a tricky, curving, unknown, surprising, obstacle-strewn path, you’d be a fool to keep your head down and look just at the next step in front of you. You’d be equally a fool just to peer far ahead and never notice what’s immediately under your feet.
You need to be watching both the short and the long term—the whole system.
12 - Defy the Disciplines
In spite of what you majored in, or what the textbooks say, or what you think you’re an expert at, follow a system wherever it leads. It will be sure to lead across traditional disciplinary lines.
To understand that system, you will have to be able to learn from—while not being limited by—economists and chemists and psychologists and theologians.
You will have to penetrate their jargons, integrate what they tell you, recognize what they can honestly see through their particular lenses, and discard the distortions that come from the narrowness and incompleteness of their lenses.
They won’t make it easy for you. But you can do it.
Seeing systems whole requires more than being “interdisciplinary,” if that word means, as it usually does, putting together people from different disciplines and letting them talk past each other.
Interdisciplinary communication works only if there is a real problem to be solved, and if the representatives from the various disciplines are more committed to solving the problem than to being academically correct.
They will have to go into learning mode. They will have to admit ignorance and be willing to be taught, by each other and by the system.
It can be done. But, ego gets in the way if not careful.
13- Expand the Boundary of Care - Empathy - Compassion - Love
Living successfully in a world of complex systems means expanding not only time horizons and thought horizons; above all, it means expanding the horizons of caring.
There are moral reasons for doing that, of course. And if moral arguments are not sufficient, then systems thinking provides the practical reasons to back up the moral ones.
The real system is interconnected. No part of the human race is separate either from other human beings or from the global ecosystem.
It will not be possible in this integrated world for your heart to succeed if your lungs fail, or for your company to succeed if your workers fail, or for the rich in Los Angeles to succeed if the poor in Los Angeles fail, or for Europe to succeed if Africa fails, or for the global economy to succeed if the global environment fails.
As with everything else about systems, most people already know about the interconnections that make moral and practical rules turn out to be the same rules. They just have to bring themselves to experience that which they know.
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Hope you get value from this post. 
Let me know your thoughts.
Much love,
Arda
 

I was reading some thread on the forum when I saw our beloved summarizer @FlyingLotus say this:
This is an example of a very unique, valuable skill that you won't hear about pretty much anywhere. Almost no one in society is going to go and develop it deliberately. It's just not talked about.
So I wanted to ask you guys: do you know of other examples of such skills, especially those that you yourself are trying to grow intentionally? or maybe that you're planning to?
I'm talking about skills related to general self-help, education, spirituality, epistemology, creativity, or whatever! In short, improving the quality of life somehow, paying massive dividends AND uncommon to hear about. Let's make them explicit.
Some examples I thought of, or heard Leo mention:
being able to quickly spot bullshit - be that outside or inside (self-deception) being able to quickly discern how open and "conscious" a certain perspective is being able to formulate lessons and key points from things you read;  being able to read between the lines (example: I've been reading some trip reports lately, but I noticed that I'm not getting much out of this - because am I actually learning something from them, or just reading? Well, I thought to myself, I could as well take away some meta-lessons about the general process of psychedelic exploration. So I guess what I mean is when I'm reading, I'm trying to read between the lines and learn something that isn't explicitly said in the report) - quite similar to what FlyingLotus said. using a search engine very efficiently reframing a failure into a lesson to be learned the skill of organizing your knowledge and insights elegantly the skill of integrating insights you get into everyday life the skills of putting things, situations in a larger context (gaining a "higher perspective", looking at situations with a certain distance) These are just food for thought  I'd love to hear your examples. 

9sedt is better than spiral dynamic.i do not read ken wilber integral theory.which is better 9sedt or integral theory

This idea is based off of my other post titled Discipline is Ratshit - The Art of Blissipline.  
I often hear people talking about procrastination and how it is "bad" or must be avoided and dealt with.  But rarely, do I hear people talking about how procrastination is actually a good thing.  I mean think about it.  What is procrastination really and what is its function?  Here is what I am come to as a result to my contemplations on the matter.  I may be wrong, so please feel free to contribute or disagree or whatever.
What is Procrastination? (My personal answers from my Contemplations)
Procrastination is avoiding emotional labor is the thought the first crossed my mind.  But I realized that procrastination as a concept is much more broad than that.  I came up with the definition that procrastination is the "process of delaying, postponing, or avoiding something."  This means that if you have any thought of something and you either delay, postpone, or avoid doing it at the moment, you are procrastinating.  
This makes it seem silly to "eliminate procrastination."  If we eliminated procrastination, then every thought you have of doing something, you would have to act on it right at the given moment.  If I have a thought that I want to call my parents, then me not calling them would be procrastination.  But I guess it really depends on how it is framed.
 
For instance, you may be studying or you may have been procrastinating on your work, school, or life purpose.  You then take action to do your life purpose, work, and school studies when a thought to call your parents or go out with your friends seeps into your mind.  The thought to hang out with others may appear to be a distraction, or it could be viewed as a way to procrastinate, or your current attempts to grind to get your work done and stay busy doing schoolwork that you don't wanna do could be viewed as the distraction or the procrastination from facing your fears in calling your parents, etc.  You see?  
Distraction and procrastination are relative to what your current highest love, bliss, and inspiration you have at the given moment.  That is why being Blissiplined is important as opposed to being disciplined.  Blissipline is simply being a disciple or student of what your highest bliss, love, and inspiration.  It is being an employee of your higher-self.  Whereas discipline is traditionally thought of as grinding through work to get it done.  
The discipline mindset views procrastination as the enemy, as something to "eliminate."  But you are not really eliminating procrastination through your disciplined mindset approach.  What you are really doing is procrastinating on your highest bliss, inspirations, and love for life.  
The disciplined mindset may view thoughts of inspiration to hang out with friends and call family as a distraction that will lead you to procrastinate, but actually, the real distraction is your not following your inspirations and love.  You may think that grinding through your work or your 9-5 grind is your inspiration, which it actually may be your initial inspiration at first.  I may have an initial inspiration to write a book.  I may be flowing through it, but I may get to a point where that flow begins to turn into a grind.  
When it becomes a grind, I may not have that initial joy as I once did, and that is okay.  The mind needs to procrastinate in order to critically analyze our choices and plans, as well as to keep us in alignment with our highest values, joys, and inspirations in life.  If you are having fun and are in alignment with your higher self, procrastination is not such a bad thing as long as it is expanding you towards your higher-self and not as an escape to go into your lower-self.  "Sometimes doing nothing very often leads to the very best of something." -- Pooh.  
Conscious Procrastination Vs. Unconscious Procrastination
Conscious procrastination is "the process of actively delaying, avoiding, and postponing areas of your life that are no longer serving you, so that you can embody more love, inspiration, insight, and wisdom into your life, to better help you be in flow with your mission and highest bliss." This is what I was discussing above in that conscious procrastination is deliberately delaying our tasks so that way we can tune into where things in life are already figured out for us. 
On the contrary, unconscious procrastination can lead to negative results for our lives.  I define unconscious procrastination as "the process of delaying, avoiding, or postponing something despite knowing that it will have negative consequences for you."  I think unconscious procrastination is what people often talk about when they are wanting to "eliminate procrastination."  They really want to eliminate unconscious procrastination but not conscious procrastination.  
Without conscious procrastination, we cannot be in alignment with our highest blisses in life.  Society, as well as our mind, is always designed to keep us busy with problems, but our soul or spirit is always designed to keep us attuned to our intuition, passions, fun, cheer, excitement, joys, etc.  
Our soul/spirit is the child to our adult selves.  Our minds are the rational adult and our spirit is the emotional child.  None is "better" than the other.  Both parts of our psyche are important.  We need the child-like part to connect back with spirit, magic, and wonder, while also keeping the adult-like part to have the rationality to help us survive.  
The key is balance and how our relationships are with all the different parts of our minds.  It is kind of the Id and superego in Freud's psychoanalysis model.  We can't be too disciplined and neither can we be too impulsive either.  I mean, we can but a "healthy" psyche is not at discord with itself.  The ideal is for all parts of our minds to be welcomed and for all parts to be on the same mission to serve our higher-self.  
 
What I mean by higher-self is being in harmony with our intuition, heart, passions, joys, bliss, creativity, and all that makes us our best and highest versions of ourselves.  Our lower-self is fearful, disconnected from feelings (hyper-logical), depressed, uninspired, addicted, etc.  
Conscious procrastination is about being on the path towards our higher-self.  If that means to take a break and do nothing so that you can quiet your mind for an answer to come, then go do that.  Productivity is a trap, which can make people believe that procrastination is an evil to be procrastinated with (see what I did there? lol).  But in reality, the productivity mindset that unused time is wasted time has the energy of your lower-self if you can intuit that.  
How can you ever waste time if you enjoy time and are in alignment with your higher-self?  Your higher-self doesn't need to work to figure things out.  Your higher-self is always tuned into where things are already figured out for you.  Your higher-self is your intuition.  All you have to do is do nothing, connect with being, listen to your intuition, and have the courage to follow your heart.
I hope all of that helped!  I encourage anyone to contribute to these ideas here. All perspectives are welcomed!