A visual sensation might influence a thought, but that's not what's being investigated here.
We're investigating what is perceiving sensations.
Can a thought perceive a sensation?
Can a sensation perceive another sensation?
Take a close look.
How is perception happening? How is it even possible in theory? What would a perceiver even be when all there are are perception?
Focus is focus. Yes, focus happens, but this is not what I meant when I said "superior". I was referring to an existential superiority. For example, is red existentially superior blue? No. Is color superior to sound? No. Is your hand superior to a book? No. Is your body superior to a tree? No. How then, can you identify with any one thing over another? Notice, the only way that can happen is if you create a tacit heirarchy of sensations, where you basically say, "Okay my body is above that tree. And my mind is above my body. And I am above everything. I own everything."
Except what is that thing which sits at the top of this hierarchy and claims to "own" everything?
Could it be that there is no such thing, and that the hierarchy is really a fantasy?
Take a look. Is there a hierarchy within the field of sensations? Or the field utterly democratic, everything co-arising from who-knows-where?

No, the sneakiness here is the excuses and distractions being made to avoid doing the exercises.
Just do the exercises and you will progress very well.
All rationalizations for why the exercises aren't good to do, or can't possibly work, are just distraction.
Don't get so hung up on avoiding the mind that you fall even deeper into mind.
Steady practice is the key. Debating whether or not to do practice is a trap. If you do the practice, you will see results.
And enlightenment itself is not the only measure of progress. Your awareness will grow A LOT even if you don't become enlightened here. You should be happy with any gains in awareness you make, no matter how small.

"A finger" is a sensation. "The body" is a sensation. How can one sensation "touch" another sensation???
Look more closely!
There is no finger.
There is no body.
There is no you looking out at the world!
And there is no "world" for that matter.
All of those are conceptual constructions. Deconstruct them all. Direct experience has none of that. It's just raw, free-floating sensation.

Just words, neither is "it" nor "he"... it/he doesn't exists....
 
John 8:44 "You belong to your father, the devil (it/he/ego), and you want to carry out your father's (ego) desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

These exercises are part of what I call self-observation or self-inquiry.
The newbie mind needs something to start with. These exercises are that.
If you're an experienced meditator, you can simply go into one-pointed concentration on the Self and break through that way.
Or you can use these exercises to slowly deconstruct your mental models of reality until a breakthrough dawns.
It's all just different ways of skinning the same tarsier

This thread is meant to be a concise list of exercises pointing to the truth of enlightenment -- the truth of no-self.
All of the exercises listed herein are PRACTICAL! They are NOT philosophical or theoretical. They are not to be debated or pondered intellectually. They are to be actually done! Do each exercise carefully and notice what direct experience reveals. Often times direct experience will reveal something counter-intuitive, something that goes totally against all common-sense and any models you have of how reality works.
Feel free to contribute your own exercises to this thread. But do so in a concise and practical manner, so whoever is reading this thread can focus on LOOKING or CONTEMPLATION versus debating or asking theoretical questions.
This document is a work-in-progress. I'll keep adding more exercises to the list.
Here are some of my favorites so far:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Exercise #1: Drawing An Imaginary Line
 
Exercise #2: Noticing Space As Unitive
 
Exercise #3: Noticing That All Phenomena Is Democratic
 
Exercise #4: Noticing Objects Exist Only Where They Are
 
Exercise #5: Sensory Field Connection
 
Exercise #6: Noticing There Are No Objects
 
Exercise #7: Noticing The Self-Image Isn't You
 
Exercise #8: Noticing You Are Not A Point-Camera
 
Exercise #9: Noticing The Gap Between Thoughts
 
Exercise #10: Noticing The Source Of Thoughts
 
Exercise: #11: Noticing That Sound Occurs Exactly Where It Is
 
Exercise #12: Noticing The External World Doesn't Exist
 
Exercise #13: Noticing Other People Do Not Exist
 
Exercise #14: Noticing That Nothing Is Hidden
 
The above exercises are true enlightenment work. This is where the rubber meets the road.
Keep practicing all of these exercises diligently, for months, until all your imaginary paradigms of reality break down and you are left only with direct experience. When you start to feel like this silly creature below, you're on the right track:

Enjoy

INTRODUCTORY POST #1 of X:
 

FIRSTLY on ENDORSEMENT:
TRIGGER WARNING
Do not at all attempt this if you’re in recovery of anything by strong degree. Even though I personally endorse this action for this purpose given its nature, it would be of course totally irresponsible to suggest it to someone that I’ve never communicated with about it.  
SECONDLY on CONSTANCY:
Read this over and over until you truly get it and so it consistently primes your “intelligence” to operate to an increasingly more sophisticated level. You’re going to misread, misinterpret and battle up against potential projections, denials and a myriad of other difficulties until it clicks not only intellectually but emotionally where it feels right and intuitively where to the point you’re able to make sense of it to the point of grounded competence where you’re starting to be interestingly creative with the information in a way that self informs and genuinely grows your personal wisdom, at the very least.  
THIRDLY: Why Consciousness Congruence?
Alright, so I have noticed a pattern with many people on the forum now as it concerns noticing their difficulties with ego congruence or rather as I have termed it, Consciousness Congruence.
As such, little did I know that my consciousness went to work to come up with a long term solution here for people and well here it is, the path to Consciousness Congruence.
The following is specifically made for those that frequently find themselves being incongruent with who they really are underneath, reality itself and therefore the goodness, truth and love that is most inherent to the structure of a human being to the extent that there is Energetic Congruence. In this first post I will not be talking much about Energetic Consciousness however the energetic transformational process that results from this work is a mirror back to the action of Consciousness Congruence.
This… is very, very difficult work however it will provide healing and growth in this area for a person.
Its for this reason and others that if you decide to pursue this work you’ll likely undergo various forms of doubts because you’re playing with the filters of experience which mess with your confidence with respect to how you regularly process information, thus this information is only fit for the truly open minded. 
I will detail the technique after I am satisfied with all of its mechanics and the sun of its application along with recommended training time per day. For now, here is some of the theory. 
As stated this is extremely difficult work that is only for the truly invested person who is sincerely interested in living a prosperous life built on truth and wisdom grounded in their own sovereignty and self-insightful action.
Skip this journal right now and never return to it again if you feel that you have ultimate ego and or consciousness congruence where you feel in complete alignment between your heart, mind and actions.
 
FOURTHLY, what will happen if you unethically use my work?
If I ever find out about it, I don’t even care how I find out that someone else is using the information in this way I’ll assess this with my own intelligence, in short I will just sue your ass for the rest of your life until you write me a heart felt apology demonstrating how you’re making clear steps to change as a human being.
I’ll hire private investigator after private investigator referenced from my brothers long list of fellow police officers, I’ll… you get the picture.
Because I love to reign down on the parade of fraudsters without doing it to excess as we need less of them in the world, any endorsement of it whatsoever is a celebratory cork flying off a champagne bottle in a hospital ward of child cancer patients in suffering. It’s not on. It’s just not on. I’m coming for you.
(And the people you hurt to protect them if that is at all relevant and if there is at all appropriate scrupulous intelligence to that action).

FIFTHLY, will this ever become something you have to buy from me or give a donation?
You serious bro? GTFO!!! Don’t trust most of those mofo’s and if we are why? How? By what criteria? You mean that you want to trust mofo’s that have studied persuasion techniques for how long to reel you in, to get you to feel the “I think I can trust this person”. Oh man. My father is approaching his late 80’s and he be like right now, “WHAAAAAT?!?!”
Putting that aside, I endorse Leo Gura otherwise I wouldn’t be here. If Leo had made something to me it’s probably worth having a look at.
So ask yourself, are they on the level of Leo? That’s the minimum measurement. Compare and contrast in these situations with prudent intelligence, don’t just make ‘gut reaction’ based decisions, they’ve likely been studying how to create gut reactions for as long as “All of us at the end of the day still end up in a retirement village by the end of our lives / analogously”. 
 
SEXY SIXTHLY, don’t attempt the technique until you’ve understood all of the theory here.
This is why I’m not sharing the technique right away as well. If you proceed without understanding this theory and developing your own independent understanding to the point of mastery you not only won’t be able to appreciate the beauty of the technique itself, you simply won’t be able to understand the complexity of what you’re handling enough to the point of realising that no matter what you just have to keep on trying and trying until you reach the necessary level of mastery.
 
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To begin, what is Consciousness Congruence?
Consciousness Congruence is the alignment between at least the main core aspects of Conscious and Unconscious Cognition (cognition is “for lack of a better word”). Consciousness Congruence is the degree of Truth in the read and write function of consciousness. Reading here is to Perception within awareness and Writing here is to Creation with awareness. Learn to use these terms as a way of your ongoing directional (I.e. “what is happening right now within me?”) vocabulary that relates to your deeper understanding of the mechanics and through them how the expressions of being become at all possible.
To wit, the better vocabulary we generate in relation to who, what, how, why and what we are combined with the repeated use through the feedback loop we have with this experiential living we run through with awareness, the more transformation becomes possible but most importantly the more honest stated transformational potential becomes through the lens of increasing Consciousness Congruence, descriptive of the level of sophistication in communication between:
1. Perception, Thinking and Other (actions within consciousness)
2. Emotions, Thoughts and Other (events within consciousness)
3. Awareness, Sentience and Other (experiences within consciousness) 
 
All of these areas and aspects feed into, create and by degrees either align or don’t align with each other within the informational intersection at the centre of awareness where all knowledge and perception of being is made possible.
Aka, right now you’re aware of your thoughts, emotions and otherwise inner/outer actions by degrees and you have degrees of certainty and uncertainty in this respect which informs confidence, takes away from it and adds to it to either feed or take away from subsequent unconscious and conscious actions.
This awareness then engenders personal insight which informs our alignment or lack of alignment based on feeling and thought. This “informing” is something that we will refer to here as “communication”, an action of consciousness,  where degrees of sophistication either align with either and or combination of positive to negative connection between feeling and thought along with all other exclusive energetic categories here that are relevant. We will describe these outcomes from this action of continuous communication as a series of “insights” that are analogous to events which continually inform both conscious and unconscious intelligence which gives rise to intuitive and emotional to more raw computational intelligence that continually returns back to being to inform the aforementioned centrepoint we describe as “awareness”, the point where within our limitations inside the feedback loop between judgement and insight there is the freedom of potential we describe as sentience, aka free will, that offers us choice selection, that is based on pathways that make us achieve more or less consciousness congruence between the various areas within, for and as Being.
Being here is the multitude of signals that make up our experience of the present moment through the intelligent versus lack of intelligent communication between and within those signals.
 
TRIGGER WARNING
RECAP: if you at all struggle with any fair degree of mental difficulties and you’re still reading even though I’ve told you not to, I don’t want you to have self doubt, I want you to have self compassion and at the end of the day I want you to have self love to the highest end which also shares correspondence with the highest level of self awareness, for without self awareness and truly understanding the nature of being and our lived experience in the context of its evolving networks, how can we truly reflect true self love at its peaks. In this sense no matter what, self love IS your awareness and your awareness IS your self love, together they make up one side of a two sided coin that gives the best correlate in understanding the nature of someone’s sentient experience.
 
This technique is designed in such a way that we accomplish the following practical goals:
• improve confidence and self esteem from a truly authentic level, no gimmicks, no pretending or acting, you’re just yourself
• improve reflective abilities, including self awareness
• improve emotional awareness and general well being including the reflective emotional intelligence that in turn generates wisdom
• improves creative independence, a sense of sovereignty and general emotional independence
• no longer seeing the outside world as outside, no you now increasingly view it as inside because that’s how it literally is, meaning now a whole lot less projection is going to occur
• to have an everpresent experience, feeling and expression of truth, again, EXPRESSION of truth, not it’s absence, distortion or opposite
• become more imaginative, aware and creative 
• more points, just share them with me after enough training has been completed 
The use of this technique is designed to create a fundamental shift in consciousness where the perception of experiences become much more self centric to the point of comprehending them as inner mirrors that then mirror back and fourth between each other to create the next experience and the single conscious moment we experience at the described formed centrepoint within awareness amidst what is otherwise an information highway that we’re simply watching the traffic of but now, AS. 
This is designed to create and reach a pathway whereby we’re becoming increasingly more connected with our experience to the point wherein we no longer experience ANY form of dissociation and or fragmentation. Most if not all humans dissociate and fragment to some level and this is because awareness and our general sentient experience is only at all possible at some intersection between order and chaos where chaos is descriptive of noted fragmentation and dissociation. For a brain as sophisticated as ours, trauma for example that hampers the brains ability to establish Truth Signals amidst the noise aka chaos of experience, is the very chaos we feel outside of the order we experience that we know as our conscious awareness that would otherwise also be inclusive to our awareness if we had not suffered stated trauma or if no trauma was present simply where that otherwise extra bandwidth which creates the chaos didn’t come with the extra ordering ability within consciousness so that it could be expressed as a more sophisticated moment within our conscious experience. 
Upon using this technique an agent is performing the act of attempting to establish a signal between experience and awareness to transform what was otherwise chaotic undifferentiated noise to an ordered previously chaotic signal. 
Imagine that you’re watching the Powerball (look it up on YouTube it’s an Australian Television lottery show) and every time you’re going into your subconscious mind or simply waiting for a thought to arise, that’s all the numbers jumbling up and down where the chosen number, now take your time to understand this point… where the chosen number is a reflection of the intersection between the conscious power of the mind meeting it’s synthesis point with the available information on the present energy intersectional point of being. Got that? Take your time to understand that point, you’ve got enough time to contemplate all of this before I share the technique.
The technique is designed to slowly positively transform action operators (perception, thinking and other), event operators (events, thoughts and other) and experiential operators (awareness, sentience and other), so that the operation of consciousness is performed to an increasingly more sophisticated standard, aka “be more intelligent”, aka in our instance, “create more intelligent communication within being”. 
Notice how these operators are the mirrors to 1, 2 and 3 above where I describe the lenses of Consciousness Congruence that dominate this framework compared to others.
My recommendation is to throw out modern interpretations to consciousness augmentation and try to start from ground zero with respect to to our learning here starting with this preliminary introduction to the most important aspect of being, aka how our being self-communicates back to itself, I.e. inclusive of but not limited to conscious and unconscious self-referentiality, the end point of stated communication being the reflection of our present level of development of consciousness congruence up to this point of lived metamorphosis.
Now lastly, to stimulate a final level of interest let’s get into why Consciousness Congruence is even important.
If we don’t have it consciousness literally cannot make alive any Sense in Self . Aka you don’t know if you’re being yourself and even if you do you don’t feel completely balanced in that expression relative to you as potential energy in this universe as the universes expression. We have Consciousness Congruence in more spaces and places than others and all the rest of the variety of change and expression that’s possible there, but we CAN put an average aka an intuited level one to ten mathematical metric say on what we believe our level of Consciousness Congruence is and I’m going to share some of the following indicators here.
1. How much do you project onto others about others or just to yourself about others?
2. How much do you project about yourself towards yourself or onto others?
3. How much do you feel the present moment of experience and all the events within consciousness versus dissociate away from?
4. How secure is your attachment style versus how insecure is your attachment style?
5. How good is your perception of time and how much do your actions line up with your goals for the future and learning from past experiences? How about compared to your inability to work with the future and learn from the past?
Depending on how you answered these five questions your answers likely paint a very reliable picture with respect to how much Consciousness Congruence there is between your thoughts, emotions and actions, aka a prediction on where you as noted before fall from a 1-10 spectrum. It should be pretty easy for you yourself to fill in the gaps where you can now start to think about those 5 areas more seriously in the context of improving your own understanding where it leads to taking serious action that improves your personal well-being in these areas.
To add, it is important to remember that Consciousness Congruence is not a measure of your intelligence, it is a measure of how intelligently information that is available to consciousness communicates across being about itself, however, that is not to say that improving Consciousness Congruence wouldn’t be able to improve the efficiency of pre-existing intelligence and even augment it in certain specialised to perhaps even general ways depending on say the type and intensity of training.
Consciousness Congruence will be a measure of how much you’re making best use of your potential within and as being, not how much you’re obsessed with becoming “the most mentally touch guy in the world”, such would of course only be treated as a facet of your own personal development, one extremely key area that if not treated with sophistication may make you too imbalanced just like focusing on any other area at the exclusion of others can make you imbalanced.
Lastly, yes this is going to be combined with my Heart Project however now we’re beginning to look at a more complete picture here with respect to understanding how the truth reveals itself within being not only no longer through the expression and the opening of the heart but through the interconnection of the heart with its raw cognitive capabilities and everything in between; descriptive of the intersecting communication highway of information that turns the raw into a true signal and the chaos into a creative ordered one (signal). 
Our best actualisation ideas I have found from my own path come not from “what’s a great vision” but rather the position that it targets and therefore the position that I recommend focusing on in coming up with your own actualisation ideas. For me this position has always been at the intersection of chaos and order, which means that in every area of actualisation seek to understand the relationships within the invisible to visible chaos and all the relationships within the visible and invisible order. Creative insights that emerge from this synthesis will almost always likely lead to a pathway that truly transforms your life forever, and, reincarnation or not, let’s make this life we live as beautiful as possible.
Remember, take this all in slowly, reflectively in a way that solely complements your own creative mental and emotional independence. I’ll give it to you all here on July 1st regarding when I’ll share the technique combined with a follow up with complementary theoretical material.
 
————————————————-
 
This should give you all PLENTY of time to reflect fully on all of the information here combined with giving you creative connections to test out against the next set of material I create for you all on July 1st.
This will also be a great little self experiment for you to test your own adherence to trying to understand and apply the material between now and then as well as prepare yourself for when I share the technique. Upon reflecting on the first moment in which you read this after you receive the technique you’ll be able to use the information there to give you self-insight into your own ability to maintain interest in something where all of the details were not immediately revealed in full in such a way that you can go back and measure yourself against those 5 test questions on. Consciousness Congruence.

——————————————————
 
Okay I’m just trolling concerning POINT FIVE further above with this musical improvisation I did a while back but the direction is fitting. It’s humorous and has a serious tone to it as well of course.
This was sung in my head voice not my chest voice by the way which is why it’s octaves higher in both note and timbre. A Certain mood can change the way we use the information within consciousness to communicate with the muscles and areas that produce the sound.
I just love the improv haha I think it’s great, it’s just never lost its flavour for me.
Sincerely, all the best till July 1st this will be my last public post until then before I reveal the technique as discussed above.
 
 
 

There is no bubble. And you don't create flow state through contracting in your own world. Try to expand your consciousness to include everything, all the noises, the surroundings, the people, the looks, and the feelings. Let it go through you, and don't try to push the world away. Your body should be light, full of energy and letting things go through you, ground into the earth, touch your heart, but never holding on to anything. In a state of expansion you find flow naturally. You just have not learned to take the world in, and haven't learned opening your body fully to all the things surrounding you, especially the things that make you feel heavy. Maybe you are fearful and have some suppressed feelings you are not willing to become vulnerable to, and that's why you want a more bubble like experience, to feel safer and more comfortable. You have to surrender into feelings in your body that is causing the uneasiness, and releasing your aversions towards feeling those sensations. The bubble you are after is probably just the feeling of peacefulness and joy, not being bothered by anything. No loud thoughts, irritations, anxiety... Just being peaceful and joyful. You can create it through your body. By literally breaking your energetic barriers between you and which you identify with, not mentally, but energetically in your body. 
You always only feel you. Those people are reflecting the uneasiness you have in yourself. The tightness in your body. 
You need to learn to use the uncomfortable feelings that prevent you to be in a flow. You need to learn to take them in, and go deeper and deeper with every feeling. You just let go, deeper and deeper, every thought, feeling, you use to go deeper into the experience of just being. 
Play your guitar at home, and when you notice this anxiety and distortion coming up, use it to go deeper, to expand more until you become one with the world and there is no future or past, just the sensations of the present, the sounds of your guitar, the joy in the heart. 
As well as in public transport, you need to feel in your body where the contraction is. Seek it. Go into it. And learn to expand from the contraction to include it and ultimately let it go. 
Even the girlfriend/sex thing, see, there is always some things in your body going to be triggered depending on the aversions you have. We all have these unique desires that we want to fulfill and whenever we are feeling an emotional block between the desires and ourself, there is always now and then going to be anxiety and negative thoughts going to rise to the surface. These unfulfilled desires can create aversion towards the present moment as well. Which you notice clearly.
If you want your life to be a 100% flow all the time, you need to fulfill these desires, such as having a purpose, financial freedom, social freedom, health, the freedom to date who you want, travel whenever you want, to have the experiences you want. 
To start creating this, you need to learn to flow with uncomfortable feelings, accept them, and using them as guidance to create order in every single area of life so ultimately you are fully free, happy and confident that you can do what you want, with who you want, whenever you want.
It's also very normal to have uneasiness in your life, especially between 20-50 y/o, and most people carry this uneasiness all their life. Then you have these 50-60 year olds which are so relaxed, peaceful and just enjoy the heck out of life because they went on to fulfill their desires earlier so now they experienced what they wanted, and they go on to experience more of life without limitations.
You can create these deep flow states at younger ages. Rarely do people get there between 20-30, but you can if you go deep into creating what you want and take full responsibility for it. 
You know, all those thoughts, the anxiety, that you're trying to push away. Embrace it. Pushing things away doesn't work. Use it as guidance and gain curiosity towards it. Ultimately, it is there because you are not yet grounded into who you are, what you are meant to do here in this life, your personal mission, and your relationship to other people. 
Those thoughts of girls and sex coming up when you are trying to enjoy the present is just the universe telling you that they are part of the path you need to walk. The universe rarely wants to give you full flow and presence. You have to learn to create it yourself and then the universe will support you and reward you for your effort. 
Treat all thoughts as guidance that you are not yet where you need to be.
The peacefulness of being in public transport, and having full enjoyment comes after you slay your dragons. Maybe you share some smiles here and there, you talk to that cute girl sitting next to you, or you just sit in stillness, fully enjoying the moment. You can even feel this tingly joy in your body and bring it up at will. 

I wrote this and I think it's a good way to visualize the future. I think it will be interesting to some of you. The idea is to write about one good future and one bad future for yourself. A positive and a negative motivator to do what is right in the present. I encourage you all to do the exercise too. I think it will be useful to just about anyone.
Future #1 - The good future
This is a possible future 5 years from now if I do the following things:
Stop wasting time with short term pleasures (youtube, video games, movies, tv shows, porn)
Keep up with my responsibilities (get good grades in school, pursue current opportunities like research)
Keep up with my health (meditate daily, work out daily and eat properly)
Make new friends and maintain current relationships
Keep up with reading and playing the guitar
 
I am close to obtaining my PhD in physics. I'm working on research that I'm interested in. I am very skillful with my craft and I understand the inner workings of my field very well. I can communicate with other experts at a high level and I am amazed daily at the spectacular complexity that I knew was there. I am working in a respectable institution and my future career paths look ripe with opportunity. I feel as though my work is important and is really pushing the field of physics forward. I am proud of the work I have done so far and I really feel like I am living up to my potential. I'm excited for what's to come and I feel as though I'm only getting started. I have the ability to dream. I am inspired by the people I work with and feel uplifted by them.
 
Physical movements are easy for me. I have reached the physical potential I always knew I could have. I can run a 5 minute mile without too much pain. My physique is sculpted and lean. Others compliment me on my looks. Girls I don't know pay attention to me as I walk into a room. I feel comfortable in my own skin. I could take anyone in a fight, but I don't have to because people don't really want to mess with me. I sleep easily. I'm flexible
 
I have a circle of friends that I have a deep connection to. I'm either in a relationship with a girl I truly believe to be the most attractive girl I have ever met or I frequently go on dates with girls I find attractive. I keep up with my mom, dad, brother, and relatives and I know what is going on in their lives. I don't forget people's birthdays. People feel good around me and I feel good around them. I have the ability to make people feel important. I make new friends quickly and often. I can feel what others are feeling.
 
I feel at peace when I'm alone. I can explore my own mind without loosing focus for hours on end. I wake up and go to bed in accordance with sunrise and sunset. I have ultimate piece of mind. I have the ability to fully appreciate the present moment. I am grateful to be alive. Reality feels magical. I can reliably become lucid while I am dreaming. I remember my dreams very well. I'm generally optimistic about myself and the world. I have a deep understanding and love of myself.
 
I can sing and play the guitar with many songs I've memorized and I can do it well enough that others are impressed. More importantly, I deeply enjoy playing guitar and feel at ease when I can escape for a little bit by doing so. I am well read, I have read many of the books I have been interested in for a while. I don't feel in the dark with regards to my knowledge about the world. I feel mentally fit and stimulated. I can use my words quickly and with precision. I speak like a samurai cuts. I speak in a manner that is easy to understand, entertaining, and makes listeners feel smarter by listening to me. I'm quick-witted and funny.
 
Future #2 - the bad future
This is a future 5 years from now if I do the following things:
Spend unreasonable amounts of time watching YouTube, playing video games, watching tv/movies/porn
Let my grades slip and don't follow through on opportunities
Neglect to go to the gym and eat aimlessly.
Only make friends when the opportunity falls into my lap. Be lazy in my current relationships and offer no effort on my part
Quietly forget to read and play guitar
 
I'm in a mediocre university position earning $20 per hour. I'm not really an expert in anything and I'm not particularly good at anything. I kind of just took the easiest path and now I'm not doing awfully, but in my heart I know I have failed. I have completely forgotten about my dreams. I see no real opportunities in science/engineering in front of me. My heart is not in my work. I look forward to the weekends and watch the clock. I'm continually uninspired and seek to do the minimum amount of work possible in my job. I don't feel as though I have an identity. I have a faint idea/memory of what life could be, but I've never really experienced it so I don't really care. I feel numb and my life feels pointless. It doesn't really look like I'll be able to change my position ever.
 
I feel both anxious and lethargic at the same time. Daily life is a workout for me. I don't really have much energy. My body is high in fat and I'm not strong at all. I am kind of disappointed every time I look in the mirror. When I talk to girls I come off as creepy. I can't really feel how my body is doing. I get injured easily and I don't really like doing outdoor activities. I get pimples a lot.
 
I know a couple people that I talk to from time to time but we're not really friends. It's been a long time since I've had sex and there are no good options for me for a relationship. I don't have much of a drive to be sexually active because the porn keeps me sedated. I don't really flow easily in conversation and people don't really want to talk to me. My family doesn't really think about me that much. I don't feel as though I can talk to them easily. I feel cynical and jealous whenever I see others in a relationship or having a good time with friends. I don't have the confidence to talk to anyone new. People politely ignore me generally.
 
Life generally feels dull to me. There is a constant tightness in my chest that I can't get rid of except by numbing the pain with a distraction. I feel all the time. I get very caught up in the day to day events of life. I generally don't feel secure and I'm constantly worrying about the future. I have no idea what dreams even are. I'm not in touch with my emotions. Sometimes I wish I was dead. I know there's something more to life but I can't see it. Life is kind of boring.
 
I don't know how to play the guitar and I haven't finished a book in a long time. My thoughts are murky and speaking is kind of hard for me. People don't really understand me well. I have faint whispers of ideas in my head but can't make them concrete and certainly can't communicate them.

This is an updated version of my "Dimensions of Consciousness" model.
There are 5 dimensions.
 
1: Illumination Dimension  I previously called it pure consciousness dimension. 
When people say "increase consciousness" they are basically saying "increase the illumination dimension of consciousness".
The higher your illumination dimension the more awake you are.
Illumination is about recognition and clarity of non-duality/awakening truths. 
It's not about mental clarity or conceptual recognition, but about actually becoming directly conscious of that awakening truth. It's about actual awakening. 
For an awakening It is not always enough to just increase the Illumination dimension. Sometimes it is also necessary to actively try to grasp/recognize something with your mind using contemplation.
Low Illumination dimension + contemplation = conceptual awakening 
High illumination dimension + contemplation = actual awakening
 
- Practices that target the illumination dimension:
psychedelics advanced lucid dreaming/OBEs To a lesser extend:
RASA or Light Transmissions (Ramaji, Gareth, Imogen,...) long dark room retreats advanced Invocations Intense concentration and jhanas self inquiry  To an even lesser extend: all other spiritual practices. 
 
 
2: Void Dimension  The void dimension is about form vs formlessness. The higher the void dimension, the more formless and spacious your consciousness becomes.
When you increase the void dimension high enough, you are in the Void, in complete formlessness: no body sensations and maybe not even thoughts.
In order to be conscious of Love, God and Infinity plus having a formless consciousness (=being in the Void), you need to increase both Illumination and void dimension.  
 
Very profound Oneness experiences usually need a high void dimension. Because the void dimension is very good in dissolving seperation/boundaries.
 
Lowering your brainwaves causes the void dimension to increase.
- Practices that target the void dimension by decreasing your brainwaves:
Sleep Yoga SAT transmissions trance, tiredness, sleep deprivation dark room retreat float tank And to a smaller extend:
kriya/kundalini yoga meditation physical exhaustion  being sick brainwave entrainment (binaural beats, Lumenate,...)  
- Practices that target the void dimension as well:
Psychedelics  OBEs Shamanic breathing  SAT transmissions  Long fasting And to a smaller extend:
Invocations  Weed and alcohol Shaktipat transmissions  These practices might increase the void dimension also through decreasing your brainwaves, or they increase the void dimension through a different way. Idk.
Anyways, it seems that these practices (for the most part) don't increase your tiredness.
What I want to say with all that, an increase in the void dimension doesn't necessarily correlate with an increase in tirednes. That means it is possible to have a high void dimension (thus a very formless consciousness) while working out in the gym or even while taking a cold shower.
 
3:  Intensity Dimension  In the past I basically included the intensity dimension in the void dimension.
The intensity dimension intensifies your recognition (of non-dual truths). But it doesn't increase your recognition (and state of consciousness)
It for example intensifies your awareness of: Love, God, no-self, not knowing, ...
- Example 1: not knowing
High illumination and low intensity: You recognize that you actually know nothing (except for what is in your direct experience right now) High illumination and high intensity: actual not knowing (for anything beyond your direct experiences). The scenario of what your memory tells you what happened 1 minutes ago is just as likely as the scenario that you were a frog on a different planet 1 minute ago and then shifted here with fake memories. - Example 2: Different love awakenings
High Illumination and low Intensity: you recognize that you are love in this moment. This love is not overwhelming.  High Illumination and high Intensity: you recognize that you are love in this moment. This love is very intense and overwhelming. You might be crying. Extremely high Illumination and low Intensity: you recognize that you and everything else is love. You have always been love. Existence is love, there is nothing but love. (So that is the increase in Illumination dimension). This love is not overwhelming (because of low intensity).  
- Correlation between Illumination and intensity dimension:
Sometimes the Illumination and intensity dimensions have a high correlation.
For example, pyschedelics tend to increase both Illumination dimension and intensity dimension proportionally.
But other practices, like for example light transmissions (and RASA), and self inquiry tend to increase the Illumination dimension and hardly affect the intensity dimension at all.
 
- Correlation between void and intensity dimension:
Increasing the void dimension seems to increase the intensity dimension too.
For example if you are conscious of Love, and then increase the void dimension, then the intensity dimension usually also increases proportionally.
That means, your state of consciousness becomes more formless (due to higher void) and the love recognition and immersion becomes more intense (higher intensity dimension).
But increasing the intensity dimension doesn't cause the void dimension to increase too. So it's possible to have a high intensity dimension and low void dimension. 
 
- Practices that target the intensity dimension:
Psychedelics  Advanced OBEs And all Illumination and void practices which can indirectly increase the intensity dimension   
 
 
4: Magnitude Dimension  The magnitude of consciousness in a human is far higher than in a mouse. And it is far higher in a god (astral entity like Zeus) than in a human.
- Practices that target the magnitude dimension:
Psychedelics Advanced OBEs And to a lesser extend:
Advanced invocations (I think that's the most realistic practice to increase your baseline magnitude dimension)  
 
5: Alertness Dimension  During deep sleep your alertness dimension is at cero. When you wake up and are conscious, you have a good degree of alertness. When you take a cold shower or drink coffee, your alertness dimension increases even more.
 
 
 
Sometimes there is a correlation between these dimensions, but from a broader perspective they can be independent of each other and any combination is possible.
 
Here are my posts of the older versions, they contain more details on some points:
 
 
 

-physically harming the other person
-bullying, picking on one's character or anything
-taking everything too personally, getting too emotional, being too sensitive to continue/interact, making oneself the victim, getting triggered by the subject, feeling touchy about the subject
-poor reasoning/epistemology; thinking too simple; not enough nuance
-being too scared to speak your mind, feeling like an asshole and preventing oneself from just being real to themselves, feeling uncomfortable
-lying, deceptive, inauthentic, unreliable
-a clash of personality types, someone who has a hard time interacting with certain people of certain personalities/backgrounds/mindsets/etc.
-not sticking with the conversation long enough for both sides to understand each other and come to some sort of consensus (ex: switching subjects too fast, one person hogging all the speaking time and talking over the other person, not listening, not responding, seeing the other person as an idiot, repeating the same phrases over and over again and the conversation going no where, not having enough similar experience to be able to understand, using logical fallacies, not engaging (derping), not understanding the references and there needing so much time to explain stuff to just be able to keep the conversation going, being really bad at working with others)
-having such different value systems/goals
-having a different opinion on what conversations/interactions are supposed to look like and what the point/goal of the conversation/interaction it is supposed to be
-misunderstanding, confusion, poor translation, loss of data by telephone game
-censorship of information, not being allowed to speak, propaganda, blasting of one perspective and quieting of any dissenting perspectives
-not seeing self's own shortcomings and only seeing the shortcomings of the other person; seeing the other person as delusional. unaware of one's own delusions;
-unable to go deep/broad enough, not creative enough, not curious/patient enough, not enough communication skills/experience
-personal bias, survival bias
-benefit to have the outcome be a certain way, one's survival depends on the failure/exploitation of the other
-unwilling to drop one's own perspective, unwilling to see it any other way
-attention span is too short, one really isn't interested in the topic/activity, one is focused on something else and isn't really being present with the interaction
-selfishness, low scope of concern

Just some I’ve gathered the past couple years, not much. Just the ones that stick with me. The hashtags are for search function

POETIC - METAPHOR. loosely freely. from Blog Video All Understanding Is Metaphoric & All Understanding Is Metaphoric - Part 2
-
This one happened in the forum. The biggest responsibility in life is ....? As I'm scrolling down through all the richful answers. I saw Leo,  :
 
TRUTH

Part 2 of my response:
Running creates suffering if we do it wrong though right? Doesn’t the same resolution we have for exercise in part mirror the resolution we would have for healthy attachment? 
What is your perspective, would it be more beneficial for you to identify and heal the parts of you using some of what I said in part one, so accessing various forms of healing through this deeper kind of understanding, or would it be more beneficial to simply remove all attachment to your parents so you never have to suffer again? Is a lack of sentimentality the truth here or merely working to understand what intelligent sentimentality looks like and how we can slowly edge there?
Moreover, is a popular truth so one that is socially endorsed accurate because it is popular or accurate based on your irrefutable discernments of its accuracy?
Even if attachment creates suffering perhaps lack of any attachment can create even more suffering such as various psychological disorders that I could elaborate on a little further if you like. What do you intuit?
My purpose of course is not to point out your wrongness because I will be the first one to tell you all the ways in which I have been wrong as it concerns attachment and where I would have better served following insights that are similar, however when it comes to the truth of who we are as a species and our progress here on this earth, it is obvious to me that the answer is intelligent attachment is here to stay as it should, as it is more honest to the facts of what we need and ultimately, what makes us happy. 
If I lived on an island by myself and it was known for certain that I would never have anymore contact with humans by any stretch of the imagine ruin and that in this hypothetical reality all persons I had known up to this point were “bad” and added nothing intrinsically good to either my life satisfaction, purpose or happiness then it would be only logical for me to move on from attachment completely. However I know my parents still need me and I know there is some benefit to allowing in the love my parents have to give and allowing myself to give the love I genuinely have to them as it concerns these areas of both our lives. And not just my parents of course.
Though in this I truly believe my purpose is not to sway you one way or the other but mainly give you my take on the situation so you can make up your own mind. You have to follow your truth and you need to know that your personal truth is truly meaningful to those around you including to myself, so if you wish to share with me your own personal truth here regarding what lives deep down and what you can teach me about it I’d love to hear. 
What truly feels right to you as a personal truth in this subject? what positive and negative things have you learned so far about your personal truth? (As I’d genuinely love to be open minded about them) in what ways do you believe your personal truth will help you, subtract from you and by that same measure, help or take from both others and the world at large relative to what you believe best reflects your highest potential?   

Part one of my response. 
Now THIS is a fascinating feeling that I’d love to know all about or simply leave for your own introspection as you please. Some questions for you:
What associations tie you to this fear? Are you able to distinguish between those associations and how your parents would legitimately react? I recommend sitting through a simulation within your own mind here. I can recall so many instances where I would generate associations about how not only my parents would react to a situation but how just about anyone would, my parents though possessing variability based on their own unique profile they have of me, which we don’t often think about. For me I’ve sometimes wondered not whether my parents are proud or whether they admire me but what their process is for how they actually conceive of me as an individual and how they relate to me in their minds. This I tell you is a more revelatory approach and it should be, it’s more sophisticated. It will allow you to develop new associations based on understanding how you learn they conceive of you rather than just running off programmed reactions based on reactions they’ve had to you in the past. I recall the stages of transformation I went through from childhood to adulthood regarding how I conceived of how my parents conceived of me and it’s an important but scary process sometimes. To see through our parents eyes the way they conceive of us can just easily make ourselves look down on our parents as much as we may look down on ourselves through that insight, which is why awareness through the exercise is so important. The more aware we can be in all three instances here inclusive of how we ourselves conceive of our parents. The more advanced associations we can build between us and those that exist in our social world with our parents here being no different. It is in the breakdown of associations that have no reality coherence that the fabric of our social interactions breakdown and our interactions become ruled by our projective memories rather than the stillness of the moment and our true devoted understanding of each other. We may find that our parents have a sophisticated comprehension of us which will be to our benefit anyway or what is more likely the case we will find many limitations in their own comprehension and how their own subsequent associations dominate their behaviour towards us rather than our own parental idealism that under proper scrutiny we will have to come to terms with the fact that they will never be able to meet because of the well described limitations that we get better at discerning with prudent and patient diligence. For example, to realise that my father sometimes sees me as the son that used to help him out a lot forces me to see myself through his own submissive lens which corrupts my own sense of character regarding the free agent I have become. To see myself through the eyes of my mother who sees me through the associations she formed with me most as a little boy because this is when she spent the most time with me as opposed to an adolescent means that I have to view myself through in part the infantile lens that my mother can sometimes fall victim to seeing me through because I went to live with my father post the age of 9. So for you here are some further questions:
what is the best realistic positive response you can imagine your parents having and what is the worst? what associations build this reaction?  In what creative and useful ways ar you able to see new perspective on those associations and change your reaction based on these new perspectives? in what ways do you notice the associations change based on this? what are other personal development areas where you have noticed your parents have a positive reaction vs a negative? Do your best to try and identify for both sides even if it’s not formal personal development for example I’m sure your parents would have encouraged you to learn to transfer from crawling to walking right? At least most of our parents got that aspect of encouragement right!  

So here are my proposals:

(all of these channels have >50.000 viewers, interviews > 1hr, with at least several videos about topics like mysticism, psychedlics, epistemology, awakening, nonduality):
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoriesofEverything/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/conscioustv/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/NewThinkingAllowed/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/RebelWisdom/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/scienceandnonduality/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/AubreyMarcusPod/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/SimulationSeries/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/CloserToTruthTV/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/timferriss/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/metaRising/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/SpiritualawakeningNetplus/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/AaronAbke/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/lexfridman/videos
Do not exactly fit the above criteria but could be worth a try maybe:
https://www.youtube.com/c/MindvalleyTalks/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/CosmicSkeptic/videos   (connor murphy-vaccinated )
https://www.youtube.com/c/TomBilyeu/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/higherbalance/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/ThinkingAllowedTV/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/VishuddhaDas/videos

German channels with >50.000 viewers which talk about psychedelics+nonduality+mysticism who almost definitely would love to have a conversation/an interview with you (in english of course):
https://www.youtube.com/c/GreenRabbitMindbuilding/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/FlowFinder/videos
     (-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5iZWwe0PfQ (proof video: ayahusca and nodnual insights))
https://www.youtube.com/c/highermind/videos
other (niche) channels (well researched and high quality) not relating to your orignal question but which are a great source of wisdom and maybe unknown to you:
https://www.youtube.com/c/AndrewHubermanLab/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/academyofideas/videos
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC49qAywwrDrLNDgQEe3vYuA/videos

 

The path to God realization is primarily through feeling. All logic is separation and all separation is false, delusion, and illusion. Understand you were brought into a world where you are constantly trying to make sense. The true nature of reality is infinite, you cannot make sense of that which is infinite. Infinity is a paradox and all attempts to make sense of it will fail. 
As long as you commit to logic you will never reach God realization. God communicates to you by feeling and then your brain attempts to make sense of what is being told. All tension is cause by fear and fear drives logic. The only way to receive God's messages is to overcome your fear and release your tension. The less tense and apprehensive you are...the closer you are to god.
 
Notice God's grand design. Women are more receptive to the messages of God because they are more heart centered. But their feelings don't make sense and since most have not developed their logic they are unable to communicate their feelings clearly. Men are more logic centered in general and so they close their heart and focus on things making sense (survival).
Then to throw more wrench in the plans...the one that is closer to receiving God's message the woman, is more fearful by nature because her body is not as tough as the man. So by her nature since she cannot make sense of the Divine messages she gets....and because she is fearful will evaluate a man on his competence in survival and attach herself to him.
The most competent men at survival on average are paired with woman (for simplicity sake cause it can be complicated when you break down the parameters of what constitutes survival) more frequently and because their logic and selfishness gives them great power and riches they believe their orientation in life is correct. The woman...who when she is safe and secure in the environment her man creates through logic is now able to attune to God more clearly and starts pushing for more love. This throws her man off because she only got with him because he was the most logical man, and that was the LOGICAL CHOICE. But now that they are comfortable SHE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT FEELINGS. What the man does not realize is this is by design. Master Survival first...then seek God. Its easier to seek God when you have survival under wraps. The woman is actually doing what she is supposed to do to carry humanity ever closer to God.
Now if the woman has not developed her logic, she will not be able to make sense of the messages God sends her and her Man who thinks feelings are not important will not listen to her feelings and help her decipher it. If the woman has developed her logic and can make sense of it, the man will ignore her because she is physically not as imposing and she hasn't focused and mastered survival like he did.
 
This is why Jesus said "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of god." You have to be willing to release your attachment to survival to reach God. All attachment is separation from God will is denial of Ultimate Truth and Love. The only logic that is true...is everything is love. The key to reality is understanding....that the truth is FEELING. This was the truth all along!!!! It is the Ultimate truth because before their was truth.. there was love.
 
 

https://youtu.be/so2nCu2Jkbc
 
 
 
They used mass to predict the existence of the Gods particle.
 
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5YBd8m9prQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ucev7Ry1QM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs0vk092UN0
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl5SlahUrIM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC2ZiPfwf1M
 
 

This is the Christian worldview. This comes from the idea that God created the universe.
However, if you had grown up in a Buddhist culture, you would see nature as self-creating and self-evolving. 
It's all just social conditioning. Try to change your perspective with more agility until you become free of any perspective.

With all due respect.....this is a joke right?

Version 2 of the Textbook has bookmarked links for easier navigation, so you'll probably want that one instead of version 1.  
Here are EPUB, MOBI and awz3 formats of Textbook(v2).
 
ActualizedTextbook(v2)Azw3.azw3.zip
ActualizedTextbook(v2)Mobi.mobi.zip
ActualizedTextbook(v2)Epub.zip

Spiral Dynamics: Important Insights & Nuances
Sloppy application of spiral dynamics:
- Is a very complicated, nuanced and rich model, and that makes it so powerful
- Maybe after 30-40 hours of trying and applying it your own life and see where you're making mistakes and getting corrections to all that only then this model reveals it's whole potential
- It's easy to use this model to judge, classify, pigeon hole people and not get the whole fruit of it
- It takes dozens of hours of studying and application to understand the nuances of this model and how it gets misapplied
 
3 lines: additional ways to slice and dice the same thing and talk about human development and evolution of consciousness( additional vocabulary to understand evolution of mankind)
Lines of development: additional vocabulary to understand the evolution of mankind
Moral development & Cognitive development
- These can be developed individually
 
Moral:
Egocentric - about myself
Ethnocentric - all about my community
World-centric - concerned about the world
Cosmo-centric - concerned about all cosmos
Circle of concern is expanding wider and wider with each of these stage
 
Cognitive:
Sensorimotor - basic cognitive development that toddler child goes through
Emotional - also toddlers and babies go through
Con op( conventional operational)
Form op( formal operation) - most adults stop their cognitive development here( sort of rationalist cognitive function)
Post-formal( post-modern)
Vision-logic - advance form of thinking and reasoning which really goes beyond reasoning into vision an into higher states of intuitive understanding
Psychic
Nondual
 
- To apply the model properly you have to understand the notion of the center of gravity of a stage. E.g. When I say a country\ person is at stage orange it doesn't mean that is 100% orange and have no other qualities and characteristics from other stages rather they're 50% orange( their center of gravity) 25% spills into green and 25% spills into blue. Very few people are 100% one particular colour. This is what makes this model a little bit messy and when you're trying to apply/ diagnose you think that it doesn't fit.
- Movement up the spiral it's incremental( but not by 100% from stage to stage), jumping up but you're sort of slowly inching your way up and this applies to societies as well( has more diverse elements in it than an individual, there are different regions, cultures, sub-cultures, cities, rural areas, some parts are more advanced than others)
- Individual psyche does quite have a bit of diversity and people are complex we can't boil them down to one single dimension/ color
- These stages stack on top of each other: every stage is necessary. In the same way that 5th grade stay on top of 4th grade. It's now like you get to 5th grade and throw away all information, knowledge from previous grades and demonize, ridicule them, because it's a progressive ladder that we're climbing it together. It's only by understanding the necessity of each stages, only then you can stop demonizing and judge them. E.g. what it means to be at stage green is that it incorporates the lessons from previous stages.
- When you evolve to a stage you transcend and include( not demonize) it and bring the healthy elements with you and leave behind the pathological, dysfunctional, limiting elements of orange
- Doesn't mean if you're on a higher stage of the spiral that everyone in the world can be: you need to be very cognizant of your own privilege and good luck received as a child growing up: decent family, decent economic situation, able to get education. By the virtue the advancement of society that you're in you're standing on the shoulders of giants, be careful not to expect the rest of the world to already be there
- Society and culture are always evolving their way up the spiral. We've had several thousands of years of evolution culturally. The only reasons you're on higher stages on the spiral is of the reason on how much society and culture has helped you. Society has a pulling up and down effect, this depends on the center of gravity of your society. Society, friends and family will pull you down to their level and think you're nuts for trying to go beyond, and in history that's how it always was.
- In order to develop individuals we need to evolve the culture and society but we can't do that because all the people who are voting and making decisions are at lower levels who create low consciousness society. It takes time and we have to bootstrap ourselves. Most people who are born in a 1st world country they are already in a an orange or green society and take it for granted and have the tendency to criticize blue people for being to religious or fundamentalist
 
What these stages represents:
Each color stage represents density of EGO:
- RED: more dense EGO than BLUE, ORANGE etc. Expanding on what you're identifying yourself with. The sense of void/ formlessness within you is identifying with more and more form. Starts with physical body, expands to your tribe and nation, beyond to entire race and part of the world, entire human species and in the end you identify literally with everything. Because generally that's what consciousness is doing: SD is not just a human thing is just 1 particular case or example of evolution as a whole by developing more complexity expanding.
Each color stage represents levels of cognitive development:
- Is how you think/ mind work. Every color of stage represents a more sophisticated nuanced and complex way of thinking about reality and understand it. A way of thinking that builds on top of older ways of thinking. E.g. Reptilian brain -> Mammalian brain( sits on top of reptilian) -> Human brain( sits on top of both); Like updating your software from 1.0 to 2.0 and so on
- Your cognitive development really determines your value system and also the needs that you have
Each stage represents the ability to take on more perspective:
- This is one of the keys to understanding how to climb the spiral quickly, it's about taking on more points of view beyond your limited egoic perspective
- The thing that keep people stuck at their level and not evolving is that they get stuck in one perspective or another
- A mistake that many people who are good at dealing with different perspectives and looking at the world through different lenses they assume that everybody can do this. Majority of mankind( 21 century) is incapable doing that.
- Looking at the world from multiple perspectives and being able to be mentally and cognitively flexible enough to jump and abandon your own perspective and look at different points of view that's like a skill
- Most of stages are not good at this: especially stage blue and bellow, they don't even acknowledge the existence or importance of perspective, for them it's just reality and the truth. That's why those people are so close minded: especially at stages like blue, orange or even green. E.g. don't be surprised if stage blue are not being able to see all the interconnectedness of all religions and culture in the world. It's ethnocentric and can be quite racist. This is just how that mind work at that level of development
- E.g. Stage blue: is the ability to see for the perspective of your civilization and culture. Blue stage is unable to step outside of the perspective of his culture, race, ethnicity, religion, his mind needs a software upgrade towards orange and by that becoming less ethnocentric and more world-centric but also get stuck in science and rationality.
- If you want to evolve very rapidly through the spiral you have to become very good at dropping old perspectives and taking on new perspective
- Looking at the world from a new perspective is challenging, difficult, taxing for the mind to see a problem in a new creative way but you can train yourself to get good at this
As society evolves, survival needs change:
- Spiral Dynamics stages: responses to various kinds of survival needs. Each set of survival need corresponds with a particular environment that it needs to survive in
- Mankind creates and shapes its own environment which adds a very interesting extra layer of depth to this whole survival needs issue. Mankind don't survive in a dessert, tundra, we survive within the society and culture that we create most to suit ourselves, but as we do this we're becoming our greatest enemies because it's our changing social climate, changing technological advances that are happening that now creates new sets of survival needs, is no longer about physical dominance but how capable you are at socializing, playing politics that's what you need to survive in modern society.
- Having big muscles is not so important these days but knowing how to use your mind though that's very important: can earn you millions of dollars. Right skillset: program, socialize, network with people( soft skills) are more important than hard skills( lumber jack, cutting down trees, drive bulldozer)
- At big picture level consciousness is bootstrapping itself and building the infrastructure that it needs to facilitate more consciousness.
Distinction between stages, states, types and lines of development( Ken Wilber: visionary thinker) - additional dimension:
- SD: color stages - but don't explain everything
- States( additional layer of complexity): waking, dreaming, deep sleep, various mystical, non-dual, psychedelic, emotional states. Mystical states are possible at any stage, Any mystical experience will be interpreted through the lens of the stage you're at.
- Distinction between awakening and development: these are independent things but there is some correlation, the more developed you are the more likely you are to be awaken or be interested in it. You really want both. Awakening: waking up from the dream; Development: develop yourself - withing the dream
- Types: masculine vs feminine( various Myers Briggs personality types - 16 of them; Enneagram - 9 of them and other types): E.g. you can be masculine or feminine at every color of the spiral: this adds an additional independent axis, additional dimension
- As SD model as is becoming more complicated it gets better at explaining human behavior
Lines: human psyche has different facets to it, when we talk about SD we're talking about one line: cognitive development and values, but there's more. E.g. You can have a high level of cognitive development but a low level of emotional or moral development.
Types of development lines:
- Cognitive and values
- Emotional
- Moral
- Career and livelihood
- Health, nutrition & diet
- Interpersonal relationships
- Metaphysical and spiritual
- Education
- Political
- Psychosexual
- Kinesthetic
When evaluating: let's focus on the moral line( green? Orange? Blue?), how is their interpersonal development( these can be different)
 
E.g. Line an RPG character:
- Stage orange cognitive development but moral development stage red. How developed you are when you interact with other people?
- Metaphysical and spiritual very high but cognitive level of development will only be at stage orange or blue
- If you want to develop yourself you want to become a well-rounded human being, especially some of these lines are important to increase otherwise they're going to be sticking points for you and drag you down ruining your entire life. This doesn't need to mean that you'll be perfect in every line, in practice will be very difficult because raising even one of these lines will be very difficult to do
- Most people is lob-sided: nobody is the same color across the board
- What happens when we apply this model for collective groups like: corporations, nations, religions, sports teams and families: there are different lines there also. E.g. Country: lines there might be: economy, religion, culture, media, food, politics, science and technological development level, medicine system, education system, business and marketing, law enforcement, prison system, mental health, how family and marriage is viewed within that country, art. Each of these lines can have different levels of development. E.g. a country can be highly developed economically and at a low level spiritual level of development( America) or vice-versa( India)
- If you really want to apply SD to a complex problem( business, policy etc.) you would really want to break it down into all these individual lines. E.g. reforming legal system: at what level is our legal system at? Let's say orange: what would a green/ yellow legal system look like
 
E.g. Masculine/ feminine and moral lines at play in the real world:
Difference between masculine and feminine:
Masculine emphasis on value of:
- Rights
- Autonomy
- Individuality
- Agency
- Thinking
- Freedom
 
Feminine emphasis on value of:
- Care
- Connection
- Compassion
- Feeling rather than thinking
- Relationship
- Community
 
- This masculine feminine will play out at different colors of the spiral in different ways: What does autonomy plays out at stage red vs stage orange? Compassion for a women at: red, orange, yellow
 
How moral development line evolved:
3 cruel phases( orientation towards the world):
- Selfish
- Caring
- Universal care
 
3 finer phase:
When you're born your only care is about you
As you get socialized: it's about us( family, tribe, nation, city, corporation) - shift in moral development
Must include all decent human being: my levels of care extends to every human being that isn't evil
Care for all human beings without exception
Care for all living beings on earth without exception
Care for all sentient beings on all places on all planets and all realms
Care for all reality( past, present and future) - Gods perspective
 
E.g. Feminist: all war happened from men fault but that's not true because there's different flavors of masaculine
- These different color stages cannot be seen through introspection, sitting on a meditation cushion, they require wide scientific research, go out and study lots of groups of individuals across the whole world: different cultures, societies, races and compile all data and only them you see this model unfold
- Enlightenment itself has no stages, it's absolute. How you interpret it depends very much on what stage you're at
 
Spiral dynamics don't account for everything, there are independent factors:
- IQ
- Spiritual attunement
- Karma
- Genetics and environment
- Early trauma
- Physical/ mental illness: psychopaths, sociopaths
- Racial differences
- Class differences
- Economic status
 
Psychological factors and things which are independent of your stage on the spiral( can happen at any stage):
- Judgement
- Hatred
- Addiction
- Fear
- Demonization
- Projection
- Radicalization
- Ideology and dogma
- Paradigm lock
- Duality
- Justification
- Distraction
- Self-bias
- Ignorance
- Bad public policy
- Emotional reactivity
- Trigger
- Close mindedness
- Passion
- Lying
- Selfishness
- Abuse of power
- Fame
- Spirituality
- Crime
- Manipulation
- Hypocrisy
- Injustice
- Inequality
- Love
- Horniness
- Mistakes
- Business and wealth
- Denial
- Gender identity
- Victim mentality
- Laziness
- Pathology
- Group think
- Misunderstanding
- Miscommunication
- Reasoning
- Obesity
- Mental disorders
- Self-deception
 
 
There's literally no such thing as reality, you replace this notion of 1 reality with SD, which means every stage is a new reality where you live in your own bubble
Different at each stage:
- Love
- Spirituality
- Religion( E.g. there are green version of Christianity)
- Business
- Notion of family
- Health & nutrition
- Relationships and marriage
- Art
- Media
- Video games
- Movies
- Entertainment
- Politics
- Motivation: what motivates you/ nation/ team/ group of people?
- Fears & worries
- Criticism & analysis
- Reason and justification
 
What you consider good, bad, destructive, healthy, unhealthy, dangerous or crazy is relative to your stage. Every stage looks dangerous, crazy, criminal, insane, evil or deluded to some other stage on the spiral because of the lens you're looking through.
- E.g. How blue sees red: savages; how blue see blue: as a lesser civilization; how blue view orange: to materialistic, secular and to liberal; how blue sees green: relativists, nihilists, libertines, bohemians, communists and hippies; how blue views yellow: space cadets, elites, intellectuals, lost in the cloud intellectuals; how blue views turquoise: arrogant, heretics, nut cases
- How orange sees different stages red: dangerous, criminals; blue: religious fanatics who won't listen to reason; orange: competition;  green: naïve idealists, hippies, snowflakes, social justice warriors, soy boys, to feminine; yellow: impractical philosophers, theoreticians, source of ideas to exploit; turquoise: new agers, fraud and religious nut cases
- How green sees other stages: red: victim of social abuse; blue: heartless medieval fundamentalist who lack compassion; orange: used-car salesmen and greedy capitalist or exploiting people; green: fellow comrades to build a social justice with; yellow: aloof elitists and intellectuals( way to much stuck in their head, not enough compassion, not enough community and relationship); turquoise: as already what green is doing
- How yellow sees other stages: red: dangerous narcissists; blue: closed-minded bigots and moralists; orange: myopic rationalists and sleazy business men and trap in the rat race; green: naïve emotional do-gooders; yellow: competent experts, values the expertise and intelligence of yellow; turquoise: wise masters, the example of mankind can aspire to
 
 
Whatever stage you're at you will pick up the facts that support and validate the correctness of your stage while ignoring other set of facts( confirmation bias - not limited to any stage).
E.g.
- if you're at stage blue in America you will think that Muslims are taking over the world and are the greatest threat and using confirmation bias your mind will cherry pick all the facts in order to support that narrative: look at the news that you need to look at, talk to the people you need to talk to in order to only see the facts of how Muslims are going to take over the world
- If you're at green you think that global warming and capitalism is killing us all, you're going to ignore green technology( electric cars, solar panels etc.) just to confirm your bias
- If you're yellow you think: tier 1 of spiral is going to kill us
- If you're turquoise you think: it's perfect and find the facts to confirm that perspective
 
All tier 1 stage hates each other because at low levels of development the more hate, fear, bigotry, arrogance, selfishness, closemindedness, demonization, projection, emotional reactivity is in you. These forces are the source of much suffering and violence around the world that could lead to massive destruction. The benefits of having a high level of development is that you transcend fear and hatred, bigotry and closemindedness, that produces an objectively better society. It's not going to be an straight linear path because there are going to be all sorts of interests( every stage believes is the best).
- If you still judge any stage bellow you it means you didn't integrated fully that stage, you're still missing something and need to go back and relearn
 
Insights about humanity and people:
Stages bellow green don't care about the environment
Stage blue and orange will NOT understand and appreciate psychedelics
Stages bellow green will NOT appreciate non-dual or mystical teachings
 
Is it possible to move backwards:
- Generally speaking not: if you're solid at a stage or there's a temporary regression from some threat from environment or powerful negative emotions
- If you're at stage green and you have to survive at a stage red environment you'll have to go back to RED just in order to survive
 
You cannot see more than 1-2 stages ahead:
- If you're at stage orange you can see stage green, a little bit of yellow but stage turquoise you won't be able to understand
- The best teacher helping you to evolve is roughly 1-2 stages higher than you. If teacher is 3 stages is above, you won't be able to resonate with him
 
You cannot get to higher stages through logic:
- It's like a discovery/ insight which is tricky
- If you want to get from Orange to Green that's going to happen by opening your heart
- If you want to get from Green to Yellow that's going to happen through other new unforeseen paradigm shift
 
Every stage has 4 phases:
E.g. Solid stage orange:
- 1st phase - Pre-entry phase: you don't take green seriously or has any worth of value by judge, demonize, ridicule green
- 2nd phase - Entry phase: it feels like you discover a new world, you feel refreshed and enthusiastic of possibilities by telling everybody about it
- 3rd phase - solid in green and feels rather familiar, there's growth left but you kind of getting get to the plateau
- 4rd phase - the point where you've been green for a long time and get frustrated with the limitations of it and start to look for something new and admit that this wasn't the holy grail
 
You don't want to take shortcuts with working with these stages, but don't rush yourself because there's lot of material to learn within each stage. Keep going back to stages and ask: what have I failed to embody from this stage? What healthy function does this stage serve that I haven't integrated yet? There's a lot to learn about tier 1 stages. Try to exhaust the stage until you're sick of it. It's hard to do the higher level stuff when you don't have basic stuff( shelter, food etc.)
 
How to fully integrate a stage:
Find a healthy role model from that stage and study their work, how they think, system of values that guide their life, emulate them, model them, satisfy those needs and make sure you don't get stuck
 
Best techniques to move up stages quickly( without the following techniques it will take the average human being 10-20 years to move just 1 stage):
- Meditation: people who meditate move up 2 stages withing several years of meditation
- Mindfulness practice
- Psychedelics: the most powerful tool to move up stages
- Meditative yoga
- Contemplation
- Journaling
- Reading: reading material from stages above you
- Having higher consciousness friends
- Solo retreats
- Workshops and seminars
- Travel and exposure to new culture, cuisines: expands your perspective
 
Stages are a concept, they are relative, the absolute/ consciousness/ being is just 1 thing.
Pathology is possible at every stage, possible to screw up in the way that you're executing these stages
 

Guerilla Business Advice( blog video)
- The best way to become successful in life is through leveraging your ability to be creative
- Most people don't realize how powerful creativity is. You can train yourself to become extremely creative and innovative as an individual.
- If you're looking for a way to change your financial situation and more than for example: computer programming ask: what kind of innovation could I create or invent that would provide millions of dollars of value to the world?
- People don't realize how much opportunities are out there, and the only things that's stopping you it's your own self, lack of discipline, lack of motivation, ingenuity, creativity, lateral thinking( solving a problem by an indirect and creative approach, typically through viewing the problem in a new an unusual light).
- There are literally gadget you could invent that change how mankind communicates or has sex or learns or plays games or whatever
Example. Inventing a new type of mouse
- One of the biggest problems when starting a business is: you're stuck in a hole where you don't have capital to start any business you want it, most businesses are out of your league. Example. Manufacture new airplane, new car( too expensive, to competitive)
- There are little niches, gadgets, works of art that are actually doable for a single individual or a couple of people. You're supposed to bootstrap your business somehow
How do you do that?
- Got to be very wise and strategic about the product you choose, find something that people need, improve people's life, something that's missing in the market place and maybe they don't know they're missing. Maybe something that's not a gigantic problems that takes decades, millions of dollars to start. Usually this comes by innovation.
- The value you're adding to marketplace is by a gigantic project( which most people can't do) because they lack capital.
- Examples: writing a book, creating a video game, piece of music, inventing some kind of gadget( help old people, children, for dog, cat, new way to design pen or pencil).
- These days every idiot is starting YT, Twitch channel, but lean into creativity, let pure creativity that drives the value into your business
- What's stopping you: lack of creativity. If you sit down and spend 1000h over the next couple of years to invent some new toys for children you might invent it
- It's shocking how many creative opportunities exist and are completely uneased. The competition for true creativity is so slim. So few companies and people are actually doing genuinely creative things, that's so rare 1/100. The majority of companies and people are just aping others.
- Guerilla Low Scale Hyper Creative Strategy: there are alternatives to this but this is a pretty good way to do it
- What you're looking for: the key is, since the most of the labor is done by you, and don't have bunch of capital to hire bunch of people, you have to be extremely creative with your project, spend a lot time in your mind brainstorming ideas to find the one really good idea and something that doesn't require ton of money or work to actually create.
- What's stopping you: lack of skill, lack of creativity, lack of discipline
- You have to make yourself successful
- This is not a highly exploitative tactic, it will make people happy, improve the world and be a legitimate win/ win scenario
- Don’t think your powerless against big corporation because there are niches that are so small that can be occupied by an individual or small group of people. There are certain things that a large company won't invent, create because it's too small for them. What's small for amazon, for you will make you a millionaire. By being small your project can be more risky, creative innovative and can be very flexible, agile.
You got to invest time being creative
- Here is where simple principles of motivation and discipline comes in.
- Is lot more fun being creative and innovative. All factory jobs will be automated very soon.
- You got to find some way to be creative in whatever area you're interested in. Turn this into a career and take it serious.
- Is not the case that the first idea is the winner. You will have dozens of them and they will be silly
- If you keep going you will find something that is: feasible, requires low capital investment, provide lots of value to the world: sweet spot that overlap all of these
- Example. How can I design a simple game that's easy to make just by myself that would be so addictive, fun, highly replayable( so the player gets tons of value from it) and fit in the marketplace that millions of people would play it?
- Most of you won't have the discipline to work 4 years on a game. You must have the vision, make the connections and see that this is a game that will fit in some kind of a niche that would appeal to lots of people and make millions of dollars. This guy didn't have all the skills when he started, what he did it was accidental
- The mistake here is to learn lesson to narrowly. The proper lesson is: you want to find some kind of niche very similar to what this guy found: could be new good toy, sex-toy, type of mouse, for people who have disabilities. Be careful to not fall into total fantasy land. Don't create art that it's purely masturbatory: create art for your own self.
- For this strategy to work it has to be founded upon a deep understanding of something that people are interested in or want. What is it that actually make a game fun and sell well( 10 million units), it is accident? What makes a book sell so many copies? What makes a rubik cube so popular?
- Spend a lot of time brainstorming until you find the right niche, product, time, opportunity, something that's small enough to do then put all eggs in that basket do that for few years, try to build it, create it and if it doesn't work you'll fail but that's experience and lessons: business lessons, marketing lessons, skills and use that for next project and repeat that process again and again and again until one of them clicks. This requires a certain psychology, mindset of persistence, to be a creative person you have to spend lots of time on dead ends, you rarely succeed on first attempt on something creative
- What are people interested in now?( it has to be time creative). You don't want to be on a tail end of a trend, you want to be at the beginning of a trend, look into the future( what would people be interested 10 years from now?). Example: Which popular have not been popular lately but popular in the past which I can do a sort of revival on?
- The idea of inventing new categories: products, services -> this is a potentially huge money maker here( really fun and exciting). In the 70s the category of video games didn't exist: someone get the idea of combining existing components: TV( with pixels), computer, input device( remote control). Someone invented that but didn't see the full potential of it
- If you want to add massive value to the world find a new medium.  How to invent entire new medium? Baseball didn't exist, and somebody invented baseball; Novels didn't exist and somebody invented novels etc.
- You have to be very choosy because ideas are cheap and easy but implementation is the hard part. But it's very important to have the idea because it can worth 100M $
- Trick: one of the way to be creative - you must have a need to be one, study lots of sources. What are the different fields there: go look at what makes baseball popular? Why do people go to baseball, enjoy it, buying the merch? What are the common factors that makes these videogames successful? Why is pokemon such a craze?
- What makes things popular? For purposes of business
- How good ideas come: take something from the world and extrapolate, abstract out form that and build on top of it and turn it into something rather new but is very reminiscence something that exist in the world already. You can get inspirations by trends
- Untapped market: virtual worlds, virtual community of people in 3D space that live together, have politics, governments. VR and virtual worlds will come together
- You can get venture capital for ideas. If you come to investors with a really good solid idea or maybe a prototype( practical, realistic, fit into existing trends and technology and show them how you're going to monetize that idea) you can get venture capital for that
- You have to pick a lane in which you're going to be creative: it's hard to be creative with everything. You can begin that way
- Dangerous mindset: trying to knock it out of the park on the first attempt. You want to pace yourself that this is a process you'll be doing for many years/ decades and be patient about it. You'll learn a lot from project that are failures.
- The sooner you can find your lane the better
- It's a really good get rich quick strategy
- Brush up on creativity: read some books, find ways on becoming more creative
- Creativity: fun, spiritual rewarding( aspect of spirit), infinite, your mind has the possibility of connecting to that source
- Lots of obstacles are going to be emotional rather than financial