caspex

That's true. I am just realizing this.

I feel lonely, as if my life is too meek and simple if I don't spend it. Although I have seemed to fix that to a large degree now.

I took your advice and combining it with the previous one, the only obstacle I face is a dirty home and a dirty kitchen. Due to reasons, I am in a home that can house about 5 people but I am living here alone with my little sister. This home is old, requires renovation and frequent repairs, which I don't have the money for. It gets dirty real fast and it would take me maybe 2 hours a day to clean this home. Cleaning just the kitchen is feasible but it's also in need of repairs and gets dirty quick. Furthermore, almost all the lights have died in the kitchen to cooking there are night is simply uninviting. The sewage system is too disgusting for me to do anything about, and I don't think I could do it even if I decided to. It seems my spending habit would be fixed if I just fixed my eating habits.

I definitely see what you mean! That's very interesting and I agree with you on the soda fighting part. Tea(chai)(without sugar) kills my hunger so I drink a bunch during fasts. Caffeine has the expected effect on me. As described, it wakes me up and I can't go to sleep if I take it within 8 hours of sleeping. It lifts up my energy which helps me focus better on contemplation. And yeah, I just checked and it does contain caffeine. 8.3mg/100g.

I did this and saw that a glass of Soda actually makes me feel more aware like tea, that's why I drink it in the first place. It doesn't feel bad to me if it's only a glass, yet I want to avoid that much sugar. Maybe I am just not aware enough yet to see the subtle effects it has. I'll do what you said for a week and give you a report. You don't have to read it I am just doing that so I can commit

Yup. I had it one day in the later afternoon just sitting and chilling. I call it lucidity. I took it deeper as time went on. I thought, "What- How am I here?", then it evolved to, "Wait, why am I existing?", and then, "HOW'S ANYTHING EVEN GOING ON?". It literally feels like everything has just suddenly started existing, and it's the weirdest thing ever that anything is at all. If this feeling was a bud, then Leo's guides exercises to realizing you are god bloomed it.

Thanks a lot for this suggestion! I applied this to my habit of eating junk food and I am already seeing a difference.

my bad, I see now that I was complaining instead of taking responsibility

There's something inherently fucked up with mass-producing sexual fantasies as if it's some sort of work. It would take a bad toll on the actors even if they weren't being exploited. Sex in its healthy form is when both the recipient have deep respect and emotional connection with each other, which is not present, and can't be, in most porn. A lot of it is perverted and you'll find way too much that's simply twisted. I understand if you are very horny teenager who can't control their hormones watching this shit but you must leave this at some point. It's not about you contributing to this industry, it's about why you feel the need to watch this shit at all.

Yeah man it's the same for me but only when I do spiritual practices. My sensitivity only drops to what's normal to others when I completely abstain from all forms of spirituality and go completely materialistic.

I want to get into OBEs as well, I have induced the starting stages a few times. Judging by them it feels like it'll be quite hard to keep them practical and connected to current physical world. But I have heard that it's possible to train practical type OBEs

Actually the field work is quite rewarding. After all, it feels good to be good. What you said seems more of a mechanical process. I tend to stay within my limits in what I can tolerate when it comes to things like this. I am very vary of exploitation. The reason I asked you to develop other aspects of integrity is because having a strong character gives you confidence and courage into who you are and what your life truly is. Surely what I said is not the best way to go about it, but the solution is having a strong character, however may you achieve it. It may seem unrelated to your problem but feeling that safety and certainty in your heart actually makes you so much more honest. I have experienced it many times. I see this as the only permanent solution and speculating about what lies are and why we lie is a waste of time. This is because it's such a nuanced topic that it's way better to simply develop a strong character. Deeds make the person. 'Person' not in a societal sense, but in a self-esteem sense. If your deeds are such that you believe on ALL levels of your being that your deeds are 'pure', then you have unparalleled confidence akin to a mountain. Because how we view ourselves is based on our deeds. And whether we like it or not, we all know deep down how pure the deeds we did were. This is why I think one should start purifying their deeds if one wants strength of character.

Please, can you explain how violence is romantic? I want to understand.

You still need to dissolve your identification though. You misunderstood what the self is and started destroying things essential to your psychology. Sit down and contemplate who you are before you try to surrender anything. Of course what you think is the self right now will still remain, and it will evolve and get better at withstanding the energy and openness of higher states of consciousness, but there will be no self.

I have never traveled outside my country so take my advice with a gain of salt. But I believe, and what I want to personally do, is to visit the country and stay there for a good while soaking the culture. I seek the same thing as you in the post and I believe that to truly understand and soak in any culture you need to actually be present there for some time. Visiting a mimic of the actual place would not influence you as much as the real deal. When you physically travel, your mind really says that you are truly in a different country and not some copy of the actual culture. I don't think that it is possible for a copy of the culture inside another, to remain unaffected by the larger country. Although just traveling inside your country with many different cultures would still open your mind, I see traveling the actual globe as far more superior.

You know all the moral stuff like helping others, being kind, being considerate and compassionate, donating, etc.? Do some of those things out of the goodness of your heart. Like start helping others more often, go out of your way to help out homeless people, donate to charity. These are very physical tasks so you can just go and do them without thinking much. Keep doing such things, all the while comparing yourself to the most compassionate humans in history, noting how selfish you are in comparison. (Do this for humbleness.) What this will do is build character and integrity in you. At some point, you would literally feel as if you are an immovable mountain. With such strength and courage within you, being honest would be child's play. You're scared about being honest because internally you are not strong enough, you are not brave enough. The solution is to build character. Which also means slowly leaving all the petty shit you do everyday. Honesty is just one of the good values to have. But these values don't come individually, they always come in a bundle because they are all interdependent on each other.

There is definitely some truth to your critique. Leo's teachings seem to not put forth the dimension of 'action' and 'doing' in the listener as much as they do with 'mind'. While Leo's teachings not working for you has to do with who you are, it's not merely that. People here should be less biased and see that maybe there's some truth to what you say.

Don't practice this shit if you are not doing spiritual practices, it's a lot more harder that way. Bhramhacharya would give you the same benefits + more. If you are going to leave ejaculation, might as well get over sexual attraction altogether. Bhramhacharya done properly(with spiritual practices) is nearly not that hard. Semen retention seems like constantly dangling your favorite food in front of your face while you are on a water fast. It'd be easier if you remove the food. Counter-intuitively, letting go of all orgasm opens you up to even better states of pleasure. (Through spiritual practices)

Krishna or Rama are my top picks. If they don't exist then Mahavtar Babaji. If he doesn't exist then any great yogi

I mostly use the world 'realization' instead of 'awakening' because that's more accurate in most contexts. I only use 'awakening' when the state in question literally feels like waking up from a deep sleep, becoming more lucid. Awakening seems to me like a very literal word. Using 'awakening' to describe simply peering through some relative illusion, or discovering a new way of life, is not using it literally, which I think one should. In such cases 'realization' is more accurate.

I have a habit of doing the same during contemplation, when I am at peak concentration and about to generate an insight. I think it's very interesting that focus does that to your breath. I never saw it as a bad thing though. I see at as the body withdrawing energy away from other tasks to employ that energy into focusing.

I see zero reason to speculate about coral and incorporate it into the model. Spiral Dynamics is best to be used to understand individual's and collective's value systems. You can predict a lot with it. You can secondarily use it for your own development but understand it's a limited and biased model in that regard. It's even worse when it comes to incorporating spirituality within the model. Spiral Dynamics is not the only line of development and people develop in wildly different orders, and depending on their context, don't even need to integrate major parts of certain stages. In our world where even turquoise is so rare, what use is speculating about coral? If you want to do so for personal growth, why waste time in theorizing? Reach Turquoise and keep pursuing truth from there, at which point, why is there need for a model, a stage coral, if not for mental masturbation? I say drop this bullshit and pursue truth. You can't draw a map of a place you have never visited. If you are so concerned about losing way than you have no choice but to ask someone who has already been there. Your only other option is to just head in. And even if you ask someone who has 'been there', how do you know that's the only place in coral? Maybe the development branches off into multiple lines after turquoise. Or maybe it already did in the earlier stages, you just had too narrow of a view. What this seems like is people care more about "my evolution" than knowing the truth, even though they are not exclusive. See the subtle difference in values. All I am pointing out is the limitations of Spiral Dynamics when used for self-actualization after a point. Attempting to describe some coral is mental-masturbation, because it doesn't matter as the best use of Spiral Dynamics is understanding value systems of collectives and individuals, and you for sure as hell are not gonna be finding coral collectives or individuals(commonly). It's a cool project to figure out coral and add an extra stage. I am not saying coral doesn't exist or that you can never define it. All I am saying is that if you think you are pursuing truth by defining coral you're not.