Ninja_pig

Here is an absolute gem of a YouTube video which explores the ethics of factory farming through an existential lens. It also has a very unique art style and is very entertaining. It is extremely insightful and provides great new perspectives on consciousness and life on earth.

Im an American currently volunteering in an extremely impoverished part of the world and i would say the predominant stage is red. Its probably %10 purple, %60 red, %25 blue, and maybe %5 Orange. The country was pretty much entirely tribal until only about 100 years ago, so this distribution makes sense from that perspective. Some common socially accepted practices include: Having multiple wives Beating wives for disobedience or disloyalty (however disloyalty from the husband is okay) Beating children for disobedience, or to force them to learn prayers Discarding trash literally anywhere Scrolling tiktok in public with maximum volume on the phone Embezzling school or other public funds Demanding unnecessary fees from students A total disregard for traffic laws Burglary, pickpocketing, robbery A general lack of respect for laws except in fear of stronger authority I think that stage red is something that we usually only see in criminals in developed nations, but here it is the norm. It is something we largely left behind in western Europe and America by the 1800's. It is very interesting to me to see the stage acted out on a large scale. I think one common mistake that volunteer organisations make is that people are "inherently good", and that we just need to provide the proper assistance in order to rescue them from poverty. The truth is that people are inherently going to act out their current stage. They aren't going to be acting out whatever your stage's version of good is just because you educate them about it. The fact that we don't understand that makes %95 of foreign development efforts useless. Also, the predominant religion is Islam in this country, with a little bit of Christianity and anamism (a stage purple version of spirituality similar to paganism). Interestingly, i find more of the stage blue people to be Christian, while most muslims are stage red. I think that the christian religion lends itself more to a stage blue lifestyle, although christianity here is practiced in more of a stage red manner than in the US (stricter rules, fasting, different traditions for Christmas). I think the religeon of a nation may be one of the most important things determining its spiral dynamics stage. That is why islamic nations are normally not very developed. Also, i would venture to say that the concept of a nation, in terms of a national identity is only possible at a stage blue level of consciousness. The stage red people just see it as another system to exploited and menuvered for personal gain. Therefore, any stage red "nation" will always function more like a kindom than a country, which is what we see with most undeveloped nations. I work as a volunteer in education, and i believe a well run (stage blue) school, with order, strict rules, and committed, uncorrputed staff is probably the best way to further psychological development from stage red. Education is generally very effective for psychological development no matter the stage. This is why we should focus on education especially to make a healthy society in my opinion.

Hello all, I would like to make a PSA here to tell you all that physics is very hard to understand and takes years of dedicated study and practice in order to properly comprehend. Please take any physical justification of metaphysical or spiritual conclusions extremely skeptically. When you wish to understand the theories themselves, make sure you get the math down and solve some problems in a textbook or something, because it's not like you are going to understand the theories without that. A couple unfounded conclusions I have heard: -Special relativity tells us that time and space themselves are relative and the loss of simultaneity tells us that different things exist at different points in time depending at what reference frame we are looking from. -Quantum mechanics tells us that consciousness is necessary in order for a particle to have a definite position in space, and until observation all matter is literally in a superposition of all possible states. -Quantum entanglement allows particles to communicate faster than light. These statements are not true. I will not try to explain why they are not true here because it would be lengthy and technical and most would probably not understand it because it takes a lot of math in order to properly understand. I am not trying to defend the scientific establishment or materialism here. I'm just warning you to be very careful when people who act like they know what they are talking about tell these things to you. If you would like to know the truth behind these statements, I invite you to try to get a good grasp of quantum mechanics and relativity by watching university courses on youtube, finding a good textbook or two, or even asking your favorite AI model. It will take time and hard work, but also the study spirituality and consciousness does not require that you understand physics, so it's not entirely necessary. It often happens in science communication that these topics are given very little care and journalists have no issue misleading their readers in order to provide better entertainment. I would generally like to see more care taken when drawing conclusions from these theories, especially on a forum like this where we are ideally very interested in not fooling ourselves and falling into traps of the mind.

So are you saying that in order for quantum particles to interact then you need a conscious observer which somehow is responsible for the singular spacetime where they interact? We should remember that according to special relativity, the statement "two separate points in space at the same time" is erroneous. Effectively, simultaneity is a matter of reference frame and we can't say that two particles are the same age or what have you until the point where they actually interact. This is the genius of special relativity. It does away with the need for some kind of "true" or "unifying" perspective. The lorenze transformations tell us how to reconcile one reference frame with another even though they are totally separate yet totally correct.

@theleelajoker I definitely left a lot of things out for the sake of brevity. I am just trying to prevent others from falling into the same trap I fell into, which is to think that real understanding comes from simple explanations and that "if you can't explain it to a 5 year old you don't understand it yourself". For special relativity, I would recommend classical mechanics by Taylor for a textbook, and the YouTube channels Eugene kuthoransky, Dialect, and eigenchris. For quantum mechanics I would recommend David Griffiths quantum mechanics and PBS Space Time videos on the double slit experiment. I recommend these resources because they were what helped my personal understanding the most. There are indeed interpretations of physical theories which do not have a definite right or wrong according to any real experiments we can do. I just think that we have to tread lightly and not try to turn interpretations into conclusions. I guess I could have said "these statements are at best highly speculative and have no supporting imperial evidence even though imperial evidence ought to be possible if they were true" instead of just that they're wrong. I didn't take the time to explain why the statements were wrong because I didn't want that to take away from my main point, which is general caution. I would rather we not use physics at all to reason about spirituality or metaphysics. I have a bachelor's in physics which basically means I know the basics needed in order to understand the basics. I know from experience the dunning cruger effect and I know exactly how it feels at each point. So few have really gone through the effort of trying to grok quantum mechanics that they honestly believe simplified explanations with no math are as deep as the topic goes, or at least they think they have understood the just if it. To make a correct statement about the theory takes a lot more than to make an incorrect statement. I want people to dive deeper into the math so they can think more critically about the subject. I think people are uncomfortable with the fact that they do not understand the topic so they try to pretend they do. Just to satisfy you, let me try to debunk erroneous statement #2: Quantum mechanics tells us that small particles, instead of exhibiting classical behavior, have a probability of being in any certain state once they are measured. The term "measured" means any interaction with the particle that requires It to have a definite position or momentum. For example, an electron interacting with a photon. At this time, the wave function of both quantum particles 'collapse' into a single point and they now interact at that point. Notice that a conscious observer was in no way needed here in order to make the wave function collapse. In fact, the wave function itself tells us nothing about the actual state of these particles at any point in time, only the probability of them being at any one of those points. The idea of superposition is not trying to tell us the particles are literally in every possible state, but rather a convenient way to calculate the probability that they are in each state. Now, there is the fact of Bell's inequality, which tells us that there are no hidden variables, or in other words properties inherent to the particles deciding these states which we simply do not know causing this quantum behavior. This tells us that there is some inherent randomness to how quantum particles behave which is ultimately unpredictable. As far as the math goes, you should check out the stern Gerlach experiment, and understand how quantum particle states are represented in a hilbert space, and then use that knowledge to understand Belle's inequality. This is probably the minimum to fully comprehend the basics of superposition and quantum randomness in a way that may be metaphysically relevant.

I watched the video Leo posted on his blog and found it very hand-wavey and confusing, and said many things which were vague and just confused the listener in my opinion. Here are two videos which will clear up the whole concept for you. I should warn you, the videos do not shy away from the math, but that is somewhat necessary if you wish to truly comprehend the theory. I think we should always remember that it's not reality itself that is mystical, but rather our lack of understanding that makes it appear that way. We can never directly observe reality, only our mind's construction of reality. Reality is a co-creative process. All physical theories are merely extra things which we can overlay onto our 'direct experience', which is only a construct of our mind. This includes our notions of time and space, which do not somehow exist separate from us, but instead are created by our minds in order to make a more cohesive reality which we can experience. There never was any objective time or space, that was always something we had built out of the information coming in from our senses. It is impossible to know anything more about objective reality than that raw information. Everything else is simply interpretation. If you find any physics mystical, or for some reason believe the scientific community has not fully considered the implications of their theory, it is more likely that you have not fully understood the physics rather than the physicists. May I remind you that physicists are extremely intelligent, passionate, open minded, curious, and have been studying physics very intensely for often decades. Next time you come across a 'paradox' like the pole in a barn, instead of immediately jumping to reality itself being somehow warping to accommodate this paradox, instead consider how the paradox may be a consequence of your own perspective and your mind attempting to build a coherent picture of reality (which again is illusory).

This is the best answer. Trump's administration will do pretty much anything to make sure the S&P 500 doesn't fail. Additionally, you can equip yourself with marketable skills which is the surest way to acheive financial security in the long term. This is timeless advice.

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wow! This feels like a stage Orange version of enlightenment to me. "It's all a dream, so just achieve things for the hell of it!". I very much like your description philosophy. Depending on what spiral dynamics stage you are at, you will form different conclusions from the perspective of an awakened state. The stage Green person might reason "Life is just a dream, so let's just love one another and hold nothing back". The stage yellow person might say "Life is just a dream, so free your mind and behold the beauty of creation through the pursuit of understanding ". Of course, every conclusion is the correct one, so just keep going for that dream Life of yours... Until you don't want to anymore.

Beautifully said. The universe is a verb, not a noun. God is just god-ing in the eternal now. Because of this reality is actually the ultimate good. It's pure divinity and nothing else.