Jwayne

The first objection should be its blindness, or lack of self-awareness, to its own political, linguistic and cultural biases. Next is its ensuing categorization of those biases into a universalist claim to objective knowledge rather than a model for instrumental ends and specific purposes (i.e. shorthand convenience within the ideological frame). Lastly, would be a critique of the actual contents. But that would take as a given the above mentioned ideological assumptions as a desireable standard and I'm not willing to grant that because I think it is flawed there too.

Anything color coded is obviously trivializing, unless its directing street traffic. Its reductiveness is a symptom of a degrading intellect and growing illiteracy of the audience. People today expect easy bite-sized portions and sound bites. They don't want to read The Republic and Nicomachean Ethics. They want the sparknotes version. Yet they then turn around and also believe to have systemized the ultimate hierarchy of consciousness that has ever existed. Well, you can't have it both ways. If you want to claim an objective absolute knowledge of consciousness you need to weigh all the doctrines, traditions and mysticisms together. And not merely a New Age synopsis of what they are, but actual scholarship in native tongue of how they describe themselves .

From start to finish it has an ideological bias, not only politically, but also linguistically and culturally. Not acknowledging that context, and remaining unaware and blind to itself, makes it pseudo-intellectual.

I agree its meaningful. But being meaningful is not the same as being an objective ('scientific') description of reality with universalist application (i.e. "excellent model to study evolution of consciousness"). How about we agree its one attempt to do such a thing while acknowledging its in-built ideological biases?

Spiral Dynamics is highly ideological, liberal universalist gibberish. It's childish, reductive and pseudo-intellectual. It's a kind of intellectual-spiritual degeneracy that reaffirms the ego of its ideologues that their personal ideals are higher than everyone else who has ever existed. It's incredibly arrogant and also quite violent, in that respect. A kind of blind, authoritarian cultural-epistemic imperialism.

'Rags to riches' is vulgar Marxist propaganda from the opposite direction - it is class warfare of the rich against the poor. Blame the working clsss for their own structural exploitation. Its a kind of intitutional gaslighting, actually. There used to be a strong labour movement in the United States in the early part of the 20th century (and before) and they won important achievements for their working conditions, rights and wages. They did it by collectivizing and mobilizing together for their self-interest against the forces institutionally incentivized to keep them poor (i.e. owners, robber barons, legislation condoning oppressive working conditions). 'Rags to riches' is meant to dissuade people from that kind of radical social action. Its intended to keep you atomized from others. To keep you from posing a threat to injust and unfair institutional realities.

I had brain fog for a few days after a week of COVID in December. I took some progesterone (a couple pumps of cream) and it went away in 24 hours.

There is a large and difficult language barrier. I suggest having a local friend connection to show you around otherwise you are restricted to formal tourist activities. I love most of the food. But not things like duck blood, chicken feet or octopus/squid. I don't train martial arts. But you can find old people doing Tai Chi outside everywhere, and lots of children learn Tae Kwon Do. Many gyms have boxing. You can find anything you like in a big city.

I've spent years in China

China has developed extreme wealth inequality since introducing more capitalist elements under Deng's Reform and Opening Up and that's a primary concern that their government has moving forward. China has a mixed socialist economy but the major parts are owned by the state, such 80% of the major banks or so are state-owned and not privatized. Which is very different than other systems.

What does martial arts have to do with eliminating povery or socialist development? I anticipate people are going to begin listing all of the crimes against humanity that the CCP has been involved in. My point isn't whether illiberal One Party Meritocracy or liberal Multi-Party Democracy is better. My position is each society must decide for themselves and solve their own problems. Rather my point is about the success of the Chinese economic model which is basically a non-ideological matter. All the markers of economic growth are measurable. And my further point would be that to understand a foreign culture one would ideally learn its language and history, become personally familiar ith its people and land, and try to understand it on its own terms. Because that is so difficult to do, we are obligated towards a kind of restraint of opinion. Just as I don't presume to speak about Ghana because its a foreign culture to me.

I imagine if you are a 50-year old conservative man taking psychadelics for the first time it may be 'mind shattering'. But if you read and experimented a lot with mysticism from a young age, then there isn't much 'mind shattering' that is left to happen. I suppose it is a kind of adaptation. 'Mind shattering' insights happen early and later ones are more subtle. But that doesn't mean they're less profound. They are greater than the early ones and they thus require more attention and observation.

Can we agree that reducing poverty and building schools are good things?

Firstly you need something to contribute, as in unique experiences, knowledge or services. Then you need an audience. To get an audience you need to produce content. That means testing lots of content on different platforms to see what works best and then iterating upon your successes. Finally, you need to retain clients by remaining valuable to them.

I have so far mentioned the objective economic accomplishments of the CCP, which are monumental. Like lifting hundreds of millions of human beings out of poverty in record-time. These accomplishments are things to be celebrated. And there are dozens of such achievements. These have been accomplished due to iterating upon a Marxist theory of economics. You won't understand how that economics work if you don't study it. Nonetheless, there is an ongoing case study of its success in China. So does recognizing measures that end starvation, illiteracy and disease make me 'an apologist for Communism'? Would it be better for China to remain a desperately poor, semi-feudal and semi-colonial society with a poverty level that looks like Bangladesh? No society is perfect. Anywhere you look in the world there are crimes against humanity. China has them too. But, we are doing a disfavor by not studying things that work. Like outright rejecting socialist economic development on an ideological basis. There is a lot that could be learned by studying the errors, flaws and successes of the Chinese model. It makes no sense to dismiss it entirely. Its some kind of wicked Yellow Peril McCarthyism to go censoring people on the internet who are writing positively about things in non-Western countries.

There is no way to substantiate your experiences to others unless it has correspondence to some aspect of our external shared reality. It must be reflected in some way through your living, decision-making, way of relating to others, and so forth. All religious-spiritual history is a story of demonstrations, manifestations and expressions of such awakenings. People who privately experience things, of course, it is subjectively authentic. But you asked about verification. And that's very slippery and indeterminate most of the time.

You also cannot really tell by texts over a screen. The verification is in-person, rather than a matter of language processing.

Whatever label you want to stick on it, the value of the attainment must be determined through the fruits of labour that result. Everyone wants to inverse that and quantify how many hours they have meditated and how many trips they have taken. But its possible to spend lots of time going in wrong directions. What matters is what do you have to show for it? To imply a value to any attainment there must be an external correspondence to the private subjective experience. If it has granted you wisdom and understanding, then it will be reflected in your speech and deeds. If it has liberated you from suffering, then that will be reflected in your life. All spiritual attainments must be expressed in-person, in action, in the real world. There is really no other way to substantiate them.

Experimenting taking different perspectives is a necessary part of good writing, as well as good dialogue. So I definitely agree to that part. It's a natural biproduct of intellectual integrity. To step into another's shoes and assume their perspective takes quite a bit of empathy, and means you need to subtract your ego from the equation. Being able to look from both sides is a habit I developed from a young age as a middle child. As a kid I tried to harmonize my parents and siblings. That means I had to empty myself and then to step into the other's role, AND THEN describe them as another would be able to understand. I couldn't harmonize anything if I wasn't able to accurately relate another to another. So I think that was the first time I learned how to choicelessly view multiple angles. At that age I really wanted to avoid conflict so was highly motivated to understand where others were coming from, how they experienced things and how others interpreted their actions.

Creative, open-minded, interdisciplinary, complex, mindful and critical collaboration is exactly what I've been doing for 4 years at Ascetus. I've personally met dozens of people from all over the world (hundreds more anonymously online). We read and study together. We contribute based on our backgrounds and creatively work on projects together. We compose writings together. We talk on the phone (and meet in-person, from different countries) and brainstorm together. We have programmers who have created platforms for us from scratch. We also have a media team that broadcasts from multiple platforms. We translate into different languages. We are inter-faith and international. We contemplate spirituality and religion together. Some take psychadelics and we discuss that. We continue learning and researching, and sharing our materials with one another. We assimilate whatever works and throw out what doesn't work. And then try something new. We travel to new places. We help each other with life, relationships, finance, school, career, fitness and so on. Everyone is at different places in their life and we have mutual support, accountability and friendship. We stay on-top of current events. And integrate news from all over the world that we couldn't know as a single person. Being in a collective allows exponentially more opportunities than being solo. How about you?

I know you said this is not a political thread. But one point needs to be addressed concerning whether humans will truly be liberated to pursue their own creative projects due to AI doing hard labour for us. It depends who owns the AI. Which means how governments (e.g. representations of population) will regulate it. Imagine a dystopia where a super-AI is owned by a private company. The company can phase out all human labour and secure the profits of the replaced labour (done by AI) for themselves. They will become the richest company that ever existed and wield supreme authority. The only situation where labourers benefit is when the government regulates it according to socialist principles in order to attain closer to a classless society. In other words, only countries with a Marxist economic position will use AI in a way that benefits the working class. Countries which take a capitalist stance will likely allow the AI to replace human labour in order to enrich a small class of rich business titans.

You may need to avoid people prior to 'enlightenment'. What's the meaning of avoiding people afterwards?

Observation itself is stillness. When you're looking and learning, that's inner stillness. Maharshi wants you to find 'stillness' because then it is present even during activity. First find it through introspection. Then find it through extroversion.

Taking yourself to be your own reference point is a good starting point to re-orient yourself from a 'blue pill' upbringing. But looking at others as threats isn't right. That's reminiscient of the behavior of a wounded animal. Instead you should think of cooperation. Others might know something you don't know. And vice versa. You need friends in this world. And that means being generous, kind and thoughtful. Be polite and helpful. Find ways to serve others at the same time that you are improving yourself. Trying to 'dominate others' is the fantasy of an inferiority complex. Actually others are going through the same troubles and difficulties as you.

Let's be real. If you want to understand Osho's thinking, you can read his discourses. Osho doesn't agree with all this nonsense you are probably super-imposing onto him (e.g. spiral dynamics). Osho would disagree with color coded levels of consciousness where cultures that value LGBTQ rights are more highly advanced than others. If that's your position, fine. But don't confuse yourself by trying to project that onto Osho.