Ninja_pig

I wish you good fortune

@nerdspeak well got-dayum. Didn't know I had it so wrong! I have often theorised that college would be less expensive if student loans weren't a thing though. Collages charge such insane tuition because people are able to pay for it. I'm just personally glad I have a degree and no debt.

@Majed I think going to university would be a good idea and it would allow you to make money. Just a couple suggestions: 1. Don't accrue any debt, or at least accrue very little debt. If your plan is financial freedom then debt can totally screw you. Work on the side and do coege part time if that's what you have to do. 2. Don't expect it to be super easy to get a job, but don't think it's impossible either. Make sure you do side projects, network, and try yo get internships or do research at your university during your undergrad. A degree without any other experience is worth very little. 3. Make sure you leave a little time on your path to financial freedom to pursue your passion on the side. Be writing music or otherwise perfecting your craft in order to keep your heart beating and your passion burning. Also, you never know when you will die, so don't delay too much to get your art into the world. But yeah go to college it is a good idea. Degrees are valuable even if they aren't an automatic ticket to a job. I wish you the best of luck.

@PenguinPablo I could probably go to a monastery for many years without accruing any debt. The challenge would be that I would have no career experience by the end of it so I would have to work a low skill job for a while probably. That or I would just have to remain a monk indefinitely. @r0ckyreed Sex itself isn't a big motivator for me. It's more the connection and love that our relationship offers. Maybe it could be spirituality beneficial, but would it compare to years of hardcore meditation? @ryoko I didn't want a normal job when I got out of college, and I would go into engineering because it pays well and is something I'd be reasonably good at and enjoy. The main purpose of pursuing any career for me would be to make enough money so that I wouldn't have to work any more and thus have total freedom to work on less monetizable pursuits. The last time I stayed in a monastery it was an extremely positive experience for me. It was a community of master meditators who were all there trying to help each other along on the journey. Yes, they indoctrinate you into the dogma of theravada buddhism, but the focus is always on meditation, practice over theory. I think it is actually the optimal environment for spiritual growth because you can focus almost completely on only meditation. I knew monks who would meditate for 10 hours a day, which would be hard if you were a solo monk and you had to worry about doing alms every day just to eat. Naramada parikrama sounds interesting though. I will look into it.

Hello everyone, a little bit of relevant background: I'm 22 years old, and I have been watching Leo since I was around 14 or 15. When I was 20, I spent a month at a Buddhist monastery in Thailand in between semesters in college. It was a theravada Buddhist monastery, and they were basically running a program for foreigners like me to experience being a monk. (Here is the link to their website if anyone is interested. Ihttps://monklifeproject.com/ I would highly reccomend this program to anyone on this forum. There many wise master meditators here that you can learn a lot from.) In college, I studied physics and mathematics. Right now I'm serving as a peace corps volunteer in Guinea teaching 8th grade math. I have had many awakening experiences, all except 1 from psychedelics such as dmt, mushrooms, and weed. So if you can't tell, I'm very passionate and serious about spirituality. I watched so much of Leo's channel during middle school and high school that he's basically a father figure to me. It was his work that inspired me to go to the Buddhist monastery and take psychedelics. Now I have made a lot of progress I think, but I'm really torn as to how to live my life going forward. The routine at the Buddhist monastery came down to wake up, meditate, do chores, eat breakfast, meditate, eat lunch, meditate, take a break, meditate, go to sleep. This routine was extremely effective for me. Never before had I achieved such a level of of peace, innocence, consciousness, and meditation skill. I basically told myself that I would come back once I had "burned through one piece of karma", if you will. That karma was getting a PhD in physics. At the end of college though, I did not apply to graduate school because I thought there was little chance of me getting in, and also even if I did get in I felt as though I was not prepared for graduate school. I did not want to get a normal job so now I'm doing Peace Corps. Doing peace corps and having some time away from academia, and reading some great books on spirituality, I am starting to feel a greater and greater desire to live a monastic lifestyle again. That combined with an extremely deep religious experience I had a couple months ago has really got me seriously considering spending the better part of my twenties with a guru or at a monastery whether thay be theravada Buddhist, zen, or maybe even Christian. I have recently been moving away from the idea of going to graduate school for physics, as I have been learning on my own through textbooks and online resources and have made substantial progress. So I have decided I don't need academia to learn physics to a satisfactory level for me. So what's the problem? Why don't I just go to a monastery? Basically, it's because I have a girlfriend whom I feel is the luckiest thing that has ever happened to me. I had applied to peace corps before the relationship started and then we were dating for about 6 months before I left. Now we are doing long distance, and I have been in long term relationships before but I have never felt so close to someone like this before. I didn't really understand the concept of marriage but now it makes sense to me. So I basically don't want to lose this relationship by becoming a monk for probably a long time. I really don't know if that's wise or not because I feel like she is the love of my life, but shouldn't I persue my life's purpose over that? I just feel like relationships like this only come once in a life time. She loves me so much too, how could I do that to her? I know many of you will now say that I can persue spirituality without leaving society and abandoning my relationship, but I disagree. I personally think it takes a huge commitment to make real progress spirituality. 2 hours a day of meditation is like doing 30 pushup every day and expecting to get ripped. I mean, 30 pushups will definitely allow you to make progress, but not that much. I think that to really make a lot of progress you have to be fully committed, focusing almost completely on that one goal. I'm saying this based off of my own experience. That's why I want to live that lifestyle mostly only available to a recluse or a monk. What if the relationship ends for some reason? Well then that simplifies things a lot for me. I can just persue the monastic lifestyle because at that point I wouldn't really have anything super value to lose. If I choose not to pursue the monastic life I will pursue a career in engineering probably and try to make enough money to retire at a young age like 35 or 40. At that point I can devote all my time go learning physics and meditation. Although if I did that I wouldn't have the expert instruction of experienced monks or a guru. So basically just looking for if anyone has any advice on how I should make a choice like this or can point out something I'm not considering. TLDR: I want to become a monk for a long time but I don't want to give up my relationship.

I have blood caked on my walls, I have shit stains on my carpets, I have holes in my ceiling, I have shattered windows, I have scars and permanent damage to my body from my Awakenings. That's how profoundly my dmt syinge penetrated my asshole.

Where on the globe can you walk south one mine, west one mile, and north one mile, and end up in the same location? If you said the North Pole, you are correct. But there is another location. can you find it? Think before reading the answer. Take at least a few minutes. The answer is if you are exactly 1/(2*pi) + 1 miles away from the south pole, then you can walk south one mile, walk in a circle that has a circumference of one mile, then walk north one mile, and end up in the same spot.

Personally, I have no idea where my insights come from or even how to induce them. They just come to me at totally random moments when I am deep in thought or between thoughts, or sometimes when I am working on something completely unrelated. Best advice I can give to you if you want to have good deep insights is just study and think deeply about things you are curious about, and do so playfully. Don't worry too much if epiphanies don't hit you left and right like Leo describes in his video. Just explore, don't stress!

Truth with a capital "T" means something that is not a matter of opinion, relativity, concept, or perspective. Absolute truth is just base reality with no additional material or ideas. Tangibly, this will look like a direct experience not stemming or subject to words or concepts. Any attempt to contain absolute truth within a concept will fail because then it becomes an object of the mind which is merely a form of information. Absolute truth is beyond the mind and beyond all concepts, but it is also totally undeniable once realized directly. It will be quite easy to know when you embody this value, as in a direct experience of the truth, although it may be difficult to realize all the implications of your experience. There will be no room for doubt in your mind. You are done when you are done.

I think in a metaphysical sense there is no such thing as good and evil. It is us humans who have created these concepts based on our own survival needs as a species. It is indeed a mistake to fight against evil at all costs, because what is truly evil will eventually die off of its own accord. I think it is also a mistake to say we should accept and embrace all evil, as we should also think about our own survival.

Why does practically no one care about the intersection between physics and spirituality? Leo, of course, has a very well prepared answer to this. The answer is that the modern scientific establishment, which is a giant mass of self validating authority, cannot move beyond its materialist paradigm and start to consider the importance of the observer as part of the physical systems they are studying. (Someone correct me if I didn't get this right). The trouble for me is that even given this explanation, there are no "wackos", no "fringe" or "pseudo" scientist, no internet conspiracy theorists, NO ONE who have both a deep understanding of spirituality and physics, and also have a humble respect for truth and epistemology. Of course, you have to exert zero effort to find someone who claims to be studying, or has found some theory of everything which ties together biology, consciousness, the standard model, GR, and God into one self consistent theory with a nice little bow on top. Whenever I find someone with this type of claim though, the theory will be either utter speculation (neither based on direct experience nor experimental observations), supper narrow in scope (for example, a mathematical framework to tie together QFT and GR), or a leap from some physical phenomenon to consciousness with absolutely no logic or critical thinking in between (for example, Roger Penrose positing that consciousness arises from quantum effects in the brain. Anyone who has perused spirituality deeply will know that this is definitely wrong, because consciousness does not arise from physical phenomena but instead is responsible for those phenomena. Penrose is about as academic establishment scientist as you can get though). So like, can we please find one person who for example: 1. Knows that they are god, and all of reality is part of their mind. In other words they have discovered absolute truth. 2. Understands the mathematics and logic behind physical theories like general relativity and quantum field theory. 3. Seeks to use their understanding of these two fields to build a cohesive model of the universe. Starting from the one absolute truth and from there deriving all the relative truths that we know and love today. I mean, this is definitely a big ask, but at the same time you would expect to see a couple people working on this. In reality though, there are NONE. I think someone might be able to to point out a couple contenders for people trying to work on this, such as Christopher Lanigan or maybe Joseph Campbell. But their theories are unsatisfactory to me. So I'm going to try to be as clear as possible as to what I'm looking for: I want an explanation of everything, nothing less. I want someone to be able to take the unopinionated ground truth of all of reality, which is nonduality, god, consciousness itself, or whatever you want to call it. I want the theory to start from 0. From nothing. From the point of total nothingness and ending in the exact nature of the reality which we see before our eyes today. A theory like this would be totally logical and be based on subjective experience of absolute truth at the most basic level. From this point, I want to be able to describe the nature of our conscious experience, and the objective reality which we seem to be experiencing living in. I want U(1)xSU(2)xSU(3) symmetry to be explained, and I want every physical phenomenon in the whole universe to be able to be explained. I don't really see anyone who has a really good understanding of the foundations of physics right now and at the same time has a really good understand of consciousness and absolute truth. Personally, I have what I would consider a surface level understanding of both of these things. I'm working on it myself, but I don't see anyone else who I would consider to be like me. I have spent some time at a Buddhist monastery so far, and I have bachelors in mathematics and physics, but I have waaay more work to do before I really even know the exact questions to ask. Anyway, all the theoretical physicists today are materialists and if they are talking about consciousness it's because they want to be trendy, but really they have no idea what they are talking about once they get away from physics. All mystics I know of who know about direct experience of absolute truth seem to not really care about physics, or have a very lazy understanding of it. So yeah this was just a rant let me know what you think.

This image is truly historic. It may not be fun to be seeing modern history unfold, but a t least it's interesting.

Also, I believe it might be quite difficult to really understand spiral dynamics from the stage blue vantage point. You might not be stage blue but stage green or something like that. Few adults in modern America are stage red. It's primitive by today's standards. It might be best for you right now to use religion to move beyond that stage, rather than the advice of integral psychology. Embody the best you can the values of Christianity or Hinduism or whatever your faith may be.

I think when it comes to integrating a previous stage, it's not about trying to act out that stage, but trying to understand it, embrace it, and accept it. What you have to do is bring up these shadow qualities within yourself, and understand where they are coming from. Then you must fully accept them into your own identity/being, and then you will have the ability to transcend into the blue stage. You can identify shadow elements in yourself by seeing the insecurities you have or negative qualities you project into others. Usually our projections are actually just the unwanted qualities within ourselves. A technique for working though your shadow is using the "3 2 1" method proposed by Ken Wilber. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://bhavanalearninggroup.com/wp-content/uploads/321-Process-for-the-Shadow.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwix5Yn6x9uJAxUIMtAFHULZIY4QFnoECB0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw0Cq9RxBkWRsdpQcNQ7BocK

I like how the brand new forum member's first post is accidently very meta in a forum that prides itself on being meta.