UpperMaster

this is such an inspiring thread

fam, what are you planning to do

Bro half the time I try to get on the website there’s an error now. The forum is valuable to me so I still go on. but yea like this might actually deter potential new members from joining.

Impossible to test almost. Super expected unsexy answer but a combination of both. I think environment plays a huge role. Even babies pick up small cues. look at the “bad baby” in experiment, where AMERICAN black and white babies were placed in front of a black and white doll. They both had to chose which ones good or bad. Most babies chose black doll as bad. why? Because of cues in the environment. That’s insane that a baby picks up on it. in Africa black babies and children that see white people think of them as ghosts. how does this connect to your message? Point is, cues in the environment inform us on what is valuable and not. So as a baby you and many of your family members picked up on the fact that being artistic is value since being born. Even before necessarily picking up a paintbrush. This is speculation.

I think for me this is a huge take away. over the past two years I realised how much work is actually required for high level results. Working from 2 hours focused to 6 hours focused was a huge shift for me. Even that some people don’t do. Being able to work for 12 hours seems almost necessary if you’re incredibly ambitious. 6 hours only gets you so far, now I realise.

You’ve once mentioned that your work is not for psychopaths or people who just naturally get pleasure from hurting people. but for the sake of understanding: If a psychopath both likes to hurt people (no conscience), and cares about truth is will his consciousness really be limited. The only reason most of us can’t commit “devilry” while caring about the truth is that doing so usually requires lying to ourselves to justify our actions. But a psychopath doesn’t need self-deception he can commit evil without feeling anything at all. So he CAN be evil without sacrificing truth… or am I going wrong?

makes more sense.

These are some more questions: 1. Have you taken the life purpose course? Would you call your business a life purpose. 2. Are you fulfilled now that your rich? 3. Is there any business guru/material you recommend? 4. How do you deal with jealousy from other people? I know I will become financially free, I am scared of how my friends might take if I become rich and they don't, have you had any experiences around that? 5. Do you live a balanced life? Or do you believe is seasons? (Example, being season of 3 years for work, season of dating after) 6. Is networking important? How important? 7. What is some of the most overlooked advice in your opinion? 8. What is the most corrupt part of your job if you were to be completely honest? I know I asked a bunch, if you answered something elsewhere or don't want to no need to answer. I'd appreciate a lot if you can answer the bold text questions. Thanks!!

Awesome

I wonder what your guys opinion on the role social media companies have with this event. I don't use instagram or Facebook, but a lot of my friends tell me that they've seen the footage of the shooting immediately after opening the app. They told me that unlike before, there is no warning or even attempt at censorship. In general I was aware that gore videos are more frequent on instagram reels, but seems like everyone saw it. Does the fact that more people are exposed to the video affect politics? Do social media apps do this deliberately or was this simply because everyone was reposting the video?

How much luck is needed to become a millionaire?

I was continuing to leverage my superstitious OCD in order to become super productive. I don't think I will ever do it again. So basically to recap, the way this works is the following: I make a superstitious deal with the universe where I have to do action X or something bad will happen. The bad thing that "will happen" is chosen by me at the start of the deal. The bad thing is what motivates me to do action. This deal was initially started by me with the efforts to completely eliminate any procrastination, and has been incredibly effective. Recently, I made a "deal" where if I don't go to bed by 11 pm everyday that a rival of mine will be luckier than me in 2026. When making the deal, I also outlined few exceptions to when I can get out of bed. These exceptions are: 1. Going to the bathroom 2. If parents call for an emergency or there is some sort of crisis I thought this was a clever contract, because it gave me room to use the bathroom and also took into consideration possible disturbances. Yesterday however, a timer that I forgot to remove started going off in the middle of the night. Completely unwarranted. I waited till I needed to take a piss, stood up and while going to the bathroom also switched off the phone. Problem is, I am not sure whether or not the "deal" is still on or not. Because if I were to be truthful to myself, one of the reasons I got out of bed is to switch off the timer, which isn't a proper reason for getting out of bed as per the specifications in the contract. But at the same time, I needed to use the bathroom, which is a proper reason as per the contract. With these sort of things, I always ask whether or not my past self who made the contract would allows myself to look at my phone while going to the bathroom. Honestly I don't think so. So maybe my contract is broken. See how much of a clusterfuck mechanism this is. It's like I am creating problems that didn't exist in the first place. When I started using the mechanism, I was desperate for results, so desperate that I was willing to sacrifice anything, tell myself anything to be able to achieve some form of success. Now I realize that maybe I should go back to developing self discipline normally. Although this mechanism works, it isn't without cost. I'm scared it will ruin my life because there can always be events like the one aforementioned (alarm ringing), that are out of your control and can ruin the "deal" I set. Like now, I actually might start believing that my rival may be luckier than me next year. What if I had made a more serious deal, like "I wouldn't be able to have children" that would be super motivating, but if it went wrong, then I would actually start believing that. Whether it's true or not I can't say, as I am legitamitley superstitious that's why this mechanism works. But even if the mechanism isn't actually true, simply believing that a bad outcome will happen could become a self fulfilling prophecy. Truthfully, I haven't investigated other possible drawbacks in using mechanisms like this. I suspect that it could worsen OCD (therapist suggested). But the aforementioned drawback is a pretty big one, enough to never use it again. I've used this mechanism to be able to work 6 hours a day for 30 days. Now I know I can do it. Fear really drives me, I think I might still use fear as motivation, but I will not use it through this mechanism, as I suspect it will cause many other problems. So no more of this. This is decision is based on intuition + the fact that if I fail to fulfill any of those deals, it actually has psychological (or real world) impacts on me (which are not worth it).

Male 19. First year university (currently taking reseat exams). I'm honestly afraid I might fail the year. I want to self-actualise. This is my journal as a reminder of my growth. Many problems and issues on my mind but right now, but quite honestly my biggest hurdle is my ability to work. I've grown convinced that there is actually something biologically wrong with me. I used be the smartest in my class in middle school, I would study for exams right before the test. After COVID, my capacity to concentrate is complete dogshit. I'm a horrible results maker. My parents have pointed this out to me in numerous occasions. They can't believe how poorly I turned out, as growing up I seemed productive, but right now I'm struggling to get by in life. I already tried all the techniques to improve my work ethic and focus. I've contemplated and designed models of motivation that I could use to get myself to work. I tried brainwashing myself to think that inaction would lead to a horrific event, to fear monger myself to work. This is the only thing that got me results, but its with huge expense. Right now the only thing that works for me is putting myself in a mental state where I think I am in competition with everyone. It's this deeply egoic, dog-eat-dog mentality thats most defenitly toxic. I hesitated to keep myself in this state of mind for two reasons: 1. I become dysfunctional in other areas of life that don't involve material success like family. 2. I can't turn it on or turn it off. 3. I'm constantly stressed, it's a constant fight or flight. Like I legitamatley don't enjoy life anymore. However this mental state seems to be extremely effective in getting things done, I can work 6 hours a day on a task, with high intensity. Otherwise I can barely work 30 minutes with very low intensity. I need to be able to work or I'll remain a failure. I also don't want to waste my life away feeling like shit. I feel trapped. It is possible that I might have some heavy metal poisoning. It can explain my inability to sleep great, inability to focus and work etc. It is completely not normal for me to struggle this much to work . I don't want to become a psychopathic neurotic monster just to be able to get some work done. Other people seem to work so easily. I know for a fact that "not wanting it enough" is not a problem. My success is pretty much all I think about, and I feel a lot of pain as I feel as though I am unable to progress in life no matter what I do.

Hi guys., I have a spiritual mentor who is specialized in Ramana Maharshi's practice. I am having a heated discussion with him on the topic of Consciousness during sleep. He says that (I am simplifying): Sleep is a state where we are aware of nothing but our own being. To back up his claim he says that: When you say “I slept”, you mean “I was not aware of anything” but how could you know that we were not aware of anything unless you were aware of being in that state. He says: "If awareness ceased in sleep, we would not be aware of any gap between successive states of waking and dream, so we would be aware only of these two states, and would have absolutely no awareness of the fact that our awareness of phenomena regularly ceases in gaps between successive states of waking and dream." He says that I am confusing “absence of awareness of phenomena” with the “absence of awareness itself.” This makes absolutely no sense to me: I don’t believe I’m confusing the “absence of awareness of phenomena” with the “absence of awareness itself. Matter of fact, I am claiming that there's no such thing as an "absence of awareness of phenomena” In my view, the mere recognition that we’ve slept is not evidence of awareness during sleep. The only reason I know that I slept is because I remember the moments before falling asleep and after waking up from bed. Going into bed, then waking up hours later feeling well rested act like external cues, along with a sense of time that passed and continuity, confirm that I slept. basically my experiences suggest that I have slept. Hypothetically let’s assume I somehow slept, but all my experiences say otherwise. If your point were true, then even if all external cues suggested I hadn’t slept, I would still know I had slept simply because I was supposedly “aware” during sleep. But that does not seem to be the case. In my opinion, I only conclude that I slept because of the before and after context, not from any awareness during the sleep state itself. Movie analogy: His analogy: "As Bhagavan said, mere awareness is like the screen on which cinema pictures are projected. Whether pictures (awareness of phenomena) appear of the screen or not, the screen always remains unchanged and unaffected, so rather than attending to the phenomena we should try to attend to the background screen of awareness, on which they appear and disappear." My counter analogy: In a movie, scenes may change to show time has passed, but the projector keeps running through-out the movie without stopping. What he's describing sounds more like the projector switches off (leaving an empty screen) entirely during sleep and then turns back on later. But for me, there’s no sense of any delay at all, theres no pause. The moment before sleep and the moment after waking feel directly connected. It doesn’t feel like the projector ever stopped. Sleep feels more like a shift from one scene to another rather than the projectors stopping temporarily. I am just looking for different perspectives so I can bring into the discussion with him.

Bro this guy. No way. I don't understand how one can take someone who says things like this seriously.

Thanks for all the replies. My bad for my late replies I was not feeling well the past couple days.

I'll be honest I didn't understand that much

Yes exactly, I am struggling to conceptualize lmao. Makes sense. Have you experienced this state? How does it feel? What changes has it made to waking state?

What you said here is very interesting. I didn't know about the "High Consciousness" state. I thought the main state to attain was pure consciousness or the understanding of consciousness during deep sleep. Also you mentioned the soul? According to you we have a soul? How does it work? Your view seems very different from what I am used to. I have no idea how karma works, what spiritual path have you chosen so I know more about it?

I can't even conceptualize what that means. I am struggling to even conceptualize void of nothing because by definition there is nothing to characterize it.

Very hot. Many women. So for me not optional I guess.

I just realized one more thing. I can't even describe awareness without any phenomena. When describing something, you would use phenomena to describe it. Like shape color, even time, there's always something. But awareness without phenomena, is nothing, except itself. I am not sure how to continue from this realization though I'll be honest. I am not sure why or what proof can be given to suggest that this absence of phenomena is occurred during sleep.

I am sorry, I don't understand when you say that because I'm not even sure what sleep "is" for it to be imaginary. To me sleep is also phenomena. Sleep is what I call going to bed, then randomly teleporting to the future with no loss of continuity. (so I guess sleep is imaginary, idk if you view it the way I do tho) Yea see I researched a bit more, Rupert Spira was explaining how even time is an imagined dimension within the waking state. This actually makes sense, as then there's only the present, and it's everlasting. I am not sure if I am going in the right direction. Past could have never happened, I have memories of the past but that's about it, only the present moment is available to me. There is no proof beyond memories that time actually exists. So it makes sense that maybe time doesn't exist and its always the ever present and basically going to sleep means you get back to ever present consciousness without even aspects of time and space. idk if Im going right direction. Its not crystal clear yet.

Also what does it mean to be pure awareness, "during" sleep. What is time in all of this??

One thing about the previous guy is he has his bar set high. As in he actually does the, no junk food, sleep on time, cutting out social life. This almost gives me the "permission" to implement this discipline in my own life and be unapologetic about it.