An young being

It is not about lower consciousness or higher consciousness, it's about pleasure or bliss. Indulging in those activities you mentioned creates debt for you, in other words, pleasures on selfish grounds will come back in the form of pain one way or the other. They are not dependent on the activity themselves, but with what intention you perform it. For example, sex with a desire to satisfy your lust is different from sex with a desire to satisfy your partner or love or having a child.

If you serve humanity with a selfless intention, you will definitely reap its benefits, since your ego gets expanded. But at the same time, if you give up the pleasures of the world such as sex,money, easy food(especially non vegetarian), a big house, family etc., you will reap those benefits as well, since you do a lot of hard work for surviving while denying yourself the pleasures and hence expand your ego. There are many paths in spirituality and you can follow one or multiples of them at the same time. For example, even if you live in a forest, you can serve nature by feeding or providing water to animals or birds. Humanity is not the only group which requires compassion. What is more important is whether you have the ability and motivation to live such life. As told earlier, it's not easy to deny yourself the pleasures of daily life unless you are disciplined and spiritually matured.

Human's nature is boundless love, and why should we restrict it to a small group called family? Personally, I wouldn't advice anyone not to have a family or isolate themselves if they aren't spiritually matured or don't have a level of curiosity which is above survival. Humans are social animals by nature, and it's difficult to be alone for us for long durations, especially if our mind is not strong enough or our ego is limited in development.

Also you have to make sure you don't have any carnivores animals sharing your house.

Not a bad idea at all. As long as you are contended with that life.

Lol, atleast nations should work towards avoiding conflicts which affect the basic needs of people and keep them in constant survival mode. One reason might be the rapid development of western nations, both in terms of science and military. If Islamic countries were as developed as, say US, we might have a different situation in the world right now.

Nothing in this world can replace the pleasure of relieving the itch by scratching.

It in fact requires a lot of effort to become a person without expectations. Vairagya is said to be one of the means to achieve a state of no expectations. When the act of writing itself is joyful, the expectation of a reward need not be necessary. I too expect people to interact with me, but there are several magnitudes of expectations, and I believe I fall in the category of lower levels. We needn't become a perfect monk destined to escape all of life's suffering. Life is a game of relativity, it's not necessary to attain perfect monk state, but greater the effort, the more blissful our life experiences can be.

In my opinion, I don't see them as less good, instead I see the opposite of them as ways to have a better experience of life and one closer to the expansive nature of the universe. I do agree with you that a closed minded, less intelligent person has higher chances of creating more suffering even if they didn't mean to, that's why it's important to be free of expectations for the help you provide. Even if you see suffering arising because of your action, you learn from it to become more open minded instead of emotionally being affected by it, when you are without expectations. Even an open minded, intelligent person can make a wrong calculation and lead to the destruction of the world because of his actions, but he won't be affected as long as he is without expectations.

Yes, whatever we wish to call it

It's a pretty good thought process, but what I am referring to is Karma yoga. Although compassion creates waves of more compassion, it is your intention that matters and not the necessary result. If your intention is pure and selfless, and you have put great effort in achieving it, even if it means helping a single ant, you will reap the same or even more benefit than helping the whole world escape destruction, if it's done with selfishness and less effort.

I am not able to fully understand what you are trying to say. There are many ways to help people, medical or monetary help to those who are on the verge of dying, material help to those in need of basic things and those in need of good education and spiritual or psychological help. How do such things make others less compassionate? I believe such deeds inspire others to be selfless as well.

We can only guess those things and they can be called as theories. The theory which gives you the most satisfaction and with the highest logical accuracy shall become your belief. We are limited by the logical mind and we don't even know if things can exist beyond what we know, including infinity. That's why it's important to find contentment. Based on Hindu beliefs, the whole world functions in terms of cycles of billions of years, similar to the one you said, devolving and evolving, one cycle completely different from the other. That enables you to have all the experiences possible in this world, but how much control you have over what you can have is beyond anyone's logic, and it's meant to be unknown for a good reason. That's what I believe.

Yes, it's true. Desire is not that bad. Without it, your experiences will be very limited. Desire creates new pathways for life. Spirituality teaches you that desires for pleasures without effort, desires for the sake of yourself brings you more suffering than joy. When you desire for the sake of other's welfare, there will be more joy than suffering, especially when you remove expectations of the end results out of it.

Spirituality uses desire as fish food to help you move out of the sea of desires altogether.

I meant chasing meaning can go in both directions, but they will end up at the same absolute truth.

I don't know, it might be possible when you become completely equanimous/selfless/egoless all the time, but based on what I have experienced and seen, even the most disciplined or selfless humans always find ways to get back to wordly pleasures and desires atleast once in a while, and hence come back to the cycle. It's impossible to keep the mind free from sensory inputs all the time, which are also thoughts, but when you meditate with discipline, even those disappear and you realise what a mind free of thoughts actually is. But in our daily life, I refer to thoughts as the thinking going on in our mind about the reactions to the past and the future memories and the expectations for the ego to get satisfied in the future, and distract yourself from what is available at present from the sensory inputs. Such a still mind is said to be equanimous, and needs no meaning for living. It can pursue meaning out of curiosity and creativity, but never because of a desire to feel fulfilled or the lack of meaning. But I do believe that we need meanings, especially for the reason stated in the first para.

True, at some point in life, you would realise or even experience that God has the power to change anything, even the entire universe for you, but it doesn't, simply because it disturbs the harmonious experiences in simple terms.

Religions might disappear once an all inclusive, open minded, spiritual oriented lifestyle takes the place of religion. There will be always a need for hope, even if a country becomes rich, for being rich doesn't free you from your suffering. And hence religions will continue to exist, for the sake of hope in duration of suffering, and brain washing will exist as well as a result. But a truly developed nation, one in which humanity becomes the ultimate goal, the one where equality, compassion, gratitude, selflessness and love takes the center stage, religions will either disappear entirely or lose their relevance completely, as they survive based on these concepts as their base.

Life doesn't care about those who happily accept everything that comes in their way, so in a way it's true. You will be almost free from suffering that way. Saying life has no meaning implies that you have given it another meaning. So, which meaning gives you more satisfaction, life has no meaning or life is full of meaning? You can choose any one and it may be absolutely right. But a mind free from thoughts or a mind rooted in the present or a mind without desires doesn't even look for a meaning, since it has reached complete satisfaction with what is available right now. You can call a cat a cat, and you can call a cat a dog. One gives more satisfaction than the other, and that is considered as a meaning. Moving towards or moving away might bring the same results though at the absolute level. It becomes either a completely meaningful cat with you knowing all about it or a completely meaningless one with you knowing that it doesn't even exist.

If you can find better alternative words for an observing mind, I would happily accept that. But all meanings arise out of thinking, it's just that some are closer and some are farther away to the truth, An observing mind is simply a mind free of thoughts, that's my definition. And an observing mind needs no meaning for the things it experiences.

Both options are not bad though. Towards a pleasurable hell or a blissful heaven!

1- By looking at the past, and coming to a logical conclusion. Just go back a hundred years, and there was no paracetomol. 2- That's why you have to rigorously believe in afterlife,lol. Beliefs are good for you if you make you contended, even if it's a lie. Wealthy people experience heavy loads of pain, don't get fooled by the projections they display. The mind is a great balancer of pleasure and pain, and that applies to those having a fully pleasurable life as well. Consider that you have removed all kinds of pain from existence. Wouldn't you long for atleast some lower degree of pain such as having a cold and eating a nice meal after getting cured, crying, an extremely hot meal, boredom, etc.? That's why you need to move towards spirituality. You need to give up what you desire to see that they don't matter much than selflessness or a less ego centric life.

But we do need meaning to continue living though. Unless you are in god mode. Meanings begin only when we start to think. An observing mind need no meaning. But a thinking human mind always looks for a meaning, and the definition which gives the most contentment becomes the meaning itself. Also by meaningful, I meant having some purpose.

True. Devotion should arise out of love and not through hatred. But when you worship God or Jesus or Allah or Shiva or Vishnu, you consider them as supreme beings full of unconditional love, and free of hatred. There is no wrong in worshipping them out of fear, but the source of fear must be your conscience and not something else. The fear must make you humble, but not evil. My actual point is, when you worship a being you think is your unconditional God, names like Jesus or Allah do not matter. Only the purity of devotion arising in your heart matters. Even a religious book becomes lower in level than your devotion.