ULFBERHT

Fair points all around. Still, I wouldn't want to live there.

Lol you can barely see the helicopters flying through the air because of all the thick smog they've emitted from producing crap consumer goods and knock-off electronics. All I see when I look at this is communist ugliness. They're committing a genocide, by the way. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-harvesting-organs-of-uighur-muslims-china-tribunal-tells-un-2019-9

I'll throw my two cents in here, just for shits and giggles: I'd vote for all of the restrictions Leo mentioned on the previous page, plus one more: a restriction on the sale of firearms to young men under the age of thirty. If you're a young man and you're not in the military or some other form of public service that demands you know how to use a firearm, you don't get to have a gun until you're thirty. Why thirty? The vast majority of violent crime is committed by men, and in particular men in their late teens and twenties. Once men reach their late twenties and early thirties, their testosterone starts to taper off and their statistically less likely to commit violent crime. Actually, I think the correlation between young men and their testosterone levels and violent crime is strong enough that I'd be in favor of substituting some of Leo's more controversial gun restrictions for this one. Like, maybe you can have a semi-auto rifle, but not until you're old enough. Clearly, this won't prevent the Stephen Paddock types, but it will make a dent in the problem, and I think it will buttress Leo's proposals nicely. I'm not completely opposed to people owning guns, but we've gotta give these young bucks some time to get socialized, get laid, and chill the fuck out. Which leads me to my next proposal: legalize, tax, and regulate prostitution. Many of these young men get violent because they're being rejected by women. Sitting and waiting around for them to do enough personal development work to sort themselves out and find a nice girl is too costly. We need to get these fuckers laid and happy so that they're not going around and getting crazy because they're not getting their dick sucked.

Hitler's ideology probably cost him the war https://youtu.be/5agLW7fTzBc

Thought you guys might like this: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613092/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/

It's nice to hear Leo's a listener

I've been using Headspace for the past 51 days and have made great strides towards really nailing my meditation habit. That said, it'd be really nice if some of the more experienced meditators on the forum would check my technique before I get too far along doing a shitty job of it. Here's how it works: Headspace starts you off with a few deep breaths, has you close your eyes, and then begins the session with a quick body scan, starting from the top of the head and ending at the feet. During this portion, I like to use Shinzen Young's noting method of hear in/out, see in/out, and feel in/out as I scan downward. At this stage in the exercise, most of my noting is 'feel out', but of course other kinds of sensations arise as I scan. Headspace does not teach the Shinzen-style noting part explicitly, but they do mention simply noticing what's arising in your awareness as you scan and doing it the Shinzen way makes sense to me. Then they have you focus on the breath. You can count if you like, which I do, and every time you notice that your mind has wandered away from the breath, you simply bring your awareness back to it. I follow that direction, but every time my awareness strays from the breath, even for a second, I note the sensation hear in/out, see in/out, feel in/out. That's pretty much it. What's the verdict? Am I on the right track?

I like to clarify my intentions in the beginning phases of my meditation practice each day. Most of the time, my intention is just to be mindful and to know my reality exactly as it is in this moment. If I'm being honest though, I'd really like to experience this nothingness that everyone on this forum raves about. The no-mind, the dissolution of the ego, the radical shift in perspective. All that. Is that a negative thing? Will grasping for the mind fuck stifle my practice and actually keep me from getting mind fucked?

"But don't cha play wiiiith me, cause you're playin' with fiiire!"

@KeenokF start with something small that you can handle, and build from there. Start with small things and build the confidence in yourself that you can make your life how you want it to be. And drop the limiting belief that you're running out of time. You have all the time you need.

@Zigzag Idiot I like your style. @VictorB02 Thank you for your encouragement. @Joseph Maynor isn't that what this work is all about? If you're seeking radical truth, the ultimate truth, there must be some part of you that recognizes that once you get a taste of it, it's going be far stranger and more profound than you ever could have imagined. But that's probably all thought-story. I have no idea. I haven't verified any of this in my direct experience. I guess what I'm saying is, I'm prepared for the mind fuck, if it comes. I'm also prepared for the more mundane, it it comes. It's all good.

1. Constantly shitting is a hilarious, but not valid, concern. You'll be fine. Your body will handle the increased intake appropriately and more intelligently than you could ever manage on your own. Just let it do its thing. Actually, as long as you're eating quality food, I wouldn't be surprised if your digestion becomes better, not worse. 2. Monitor your intake of water based on the color of your piss. If your piss is not light yellow or clear, you're not hydrated. Drink water consistently throughout the day and you'll body will do the rest. Just spread it out over the day so you're not pissing every five minutes. 3. Yes, go faster. At first it's gonna be tough and you won't be able to go very fast, but soon your body will adapt, and after awhile you'll be able to handle it with no problem. Just make sure you're progressively pushing the pace and not trying to go too fast all at once. Start riding to the gym at a moderate pace that you can handle and sustain. After awhile, try to lessen the time it takes to get to the gym by picking up the pace. This may actually serve your weight lifting because by the time you get to the gym, you won't really need to warm up. If you're going to be riding to the gym, you may find after awhile that it becomes a little harder to put on muscle. When this happens, simply increase your calories until you start gaining weight again. It really is that simple. In the immediate though, I wouldn't worry about it. Start eating like I described above and you'll get bigger no matter what you do. Remember, the idea that some people simply cannot gain weight is crap. If you're a skinny fucker who is otherwise healthy, you're skinny because you're not lifting and eating. Don't let your current weight and frame be a limiting belief. Finally, I'll add that I never said riding that distance to the gym and then lifting will be easy. BUT, if you're serious, and you're looking for a challenge, you actually have a golden opportunity sitting right in front of you. Just imagine this for a moment: imagine that you completely dedicated yourself to this challenge of riding your bike to the gym four times a week, lifting some heavy-ass weight, and riding back home. Imagine that you really got your nutrition dialed in and are getting a little bit bigger and a little bit stronger, week in, week out. With that kind of activity, and with the proper nutrition and rest, in about two years time you're gonna look like you were carved from fucking stone.

@kieranperez take it easy on yourself, man. Take a step back. Go get a massage. Sit in a sauna for a little bit. Smoke a J, if you're into that. Get quiet and get some perspective. I know I always feel refreshed when I can get some quiet time to sort out my thoughts. Maybe take some time to just lay around and journal and get your thoughts on paper. After you've collected yourself and are not spiraling out emotionally as you are now (hey, it happens) see where you are with your personal development strategy and see if anything needs rearranging. As far as life purpose is concerned, let that unfold naturally. You're not going to know with 100% certainty what it'll ultimately become. Let your intuition guide you toward a path that makes sense right now and start chipping away at it. It'll work out in the end.

Bro, When I graduated high school, I was about your size. 135lbs pounds with no muscle mass and a small appetite. Then, I started power lifting. Within a few months, I put on nearly forty pounds. I didn't get fat, either. Now mind you, I wasn't shredded, but I put on quality mass in a very short amount of time and got significantly stronger. That's how newbie gains work. Here's what you do: Keep riding your bike to the gym, but ride as fast as you can. High intensity cardio is more anabolic than low intensity cardio, so make the most of it by hauling ass back and forth. Once you get to the gym, do exercises that focus on the barbell lifts - squats, dead lifts, bench presses, over head presses, and barbell rows. Do calisthenics if you want as accessory work, but calisthenics are difficult to push volume on after a while. It's easier to achieve progressive overload with barbells because adding weight is easy. Start with those workouts 3-4 times a week. Now, your nutrition: for 3-4 meals a day, whether you're hungry or not, here's what you eat : 1. Meat or eggs, with a glass of whole milk 2. A healthy carb like brown rice 3. A vegetable and a fruit 4. Finish the meal with a protein shake DO NOT WORRY ABOUT GETTING FAT AT THIS POINT. JUST LIFT AND EAT. Someone may see this post and say this isn't necessarily healthy. That person is a pussy who has never lifted a barbell. You can worry about your abs later after you get some muscle and strength under your belt. I did a routine like this for many years. As I mentioned, I put on size quickly, and a few years after that, I was over two hundred pounds and dead lifting 500 pounds like it was fucking nothing. It can be done.

@Joseph Maynor has an interesting perspective on this. It's hard to say whether Joe is talking about Leo. Maybe, maybe not. If he is, I find it unfortunate that he's making a judgement on what Leo has or hasn't overcome based on his appearance. You can only know so much by looking at a person, and by saying what he said, it looks to me like Joe is just revealing a personal bias toward what personal development and overcoming should look like. I've been growing less and less enamored with JRE podcast lately for this very reason. Even if I didn't like Actualized.org, I feel like Joe is less interested in exploring and entertaining diverse opinions than he is with finding people and ideas that mirror his already held beliefs. You can see this in his rant about testosterone in a recent interview with the psychologist William Von Hippel. That said, I think it's a good lesson for all of us on this forum who try to uproot their beliefs and really examine them. Whatever you can critique about Joe Rogan in this video, you can almost certainly critique in yourself.

I think I've really found something I can get into in the Work, but I'm hoping maybe I can kill two birds with one stone here. I read it because I was interested in the emotional mastery aspect of it, but as I read, it became clear that Katie was really selling it as a method for self-realization. Is that a reasonable conclusion on my part? I guess I can't really know until I do it, but I'm trying to figure out if another self-inquiry/contemplation habit is necessary to install in the future.

@aurum thanks. Yeah, I suppose not. And who knows, I may start self-inquiry anyway, but as with anything, you only have so many hours in the day to dedicate to personal development. Just trying to get the most bang for my buck. Thanks again.

what do you think @Leo Gura?

@SoonHei Oh yes, I've tried it out lol. I do like it. I'm just wondering if it can both double as an emotional mastery and self-inquiry practice. I've never formally done any self-inquiry like neti neti or anything, so I couldn't really compare the two.

@winterknight what is permanent? what is satisfactory?

No one here has seconded Phoenix, so it looks like it's just me and @Leo Gura. That's cool. Don't be shy, Leo. Phoenix is just like Vegas, except hotter and with less to do.

I'm reading "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport. In the first portion of the book, Cal argues for adopting what he calls the "craftsman's mindset", or the idea that gaining and refining professional skill is more important than being initially passionate about what you do. Through the acquisition and refinement of skill, he claims, the things that make people most passionate about their work (autonomy, creativity, influence) tend to follow naturally. He contrasts this with the "passion mindset", or the idea we that we must find our true passion and a job that matches it. He criticizes this notion because career passions are rare, and passion tends to develop proportionally with mastery. I really don't have much of a problem with his argument. I've always felt like I've had a hard time identifying "my one thing", so to see an argument for skill over passion laid out reasonably comes as a little bit of a relief. My one hangup here is this: shouldn't you like, if not love, the thing you've dedicated your time to mastering? I recently took a Linux system admin class. I didn't need it for my degree, but in my job I've kind morphed into a catch-all tech guy since I've learned some coding (apparently once you learn to code, people think you can do IT stuff, sys admin, fix printers, troubleshoot networks, etc), so I figured I'd give it a shot and see if I could come up with any useful skill at the end of it. I fucking hated it. I hated it so much I withdrew from the class. Navigating directories from the command line, setting privileges, the man and pinfo pages, I just couldn't stomach it. It was so boring. I don't mean to shortchange Newport's argument here, but by his logic, would I have learned to love Linux sys admin had I stuck with it for awhile longer and gotten good at it? I don't know. Maybe. But frankly, I'm not going to spend 4-8 hours a day for the next ten years doing it to find out. So, my question is: shouldn't you find something you can stomach grinding on for years and dedicate yourself to that? Isn't that what passion is? I think the craftsman's mindset argument is valid, and being excellent at what you do is vital for mastering your life purpose, but I don't think that I can accept that it's a matter of acquiring the skill alone, based on my recent experience.

Thanks for clarifying @Leo Gura. I'm working through the course right now. Figured I'd get a jump on the reading while I'm doing the exercises.

@Sahil Pandit I would suspect that the titillating, boner-iffic excitement of a new career dies down after awhile, much like the intense passion one feels at the outset of a promising romantic relationship. That isn't what I mean, I guess. You can't be totally on fire for something day in and day out. But I can't get past the idea that even if from practice session to practice session your love for practicing the saxophone, for example, rises and falls, in general and on average you should love playing and practicing the saxophone. Otherwise, what are you even doing?

see you in Phoenix