Shodburrito

All the inner work we do as well as practical self-help and goals that are pursued are manifestations of what one believes is "best" for themselves. As people get older they develop new desires and perspectives on life which replace old ones. Let me give an obvious example of what I am trying to state: A person making $60,000 a year quits and gets a new job making $100,000 a year because of the increased quality of life they believe they will have because of the new, higher-paying job. They made that decision because they thought it was better. Now let's take this concept and apply it to self-help: A person buys a new fancy self-help book that just came out and reads it. He found practical advice in the book and now changes his perspective and habits because of it. In this example, the person not only bought the book and read it, but also attempted to change their perspective and habits because simply put they believed that doing these things was better. What I am trying to get at is a very simple concept yet I don't see people state it this way. Everyone does anything at all because they think doing so is better; meaning their experience of their existence will improve. This includes wanting anything, pursuing a physical goal, changing one's perspective, believing something, learning something, loving something, or literally doing anything at all. Here is what I am getting at. If our lives are all about improving our experience of existence, should we not orient ourselves toward pursuing what is best? The question then becomes: What is best? A lot of people would start with having infinite power so we will grant that. Then they would probably create a bunch of money, fame, sex, a good family, whatever. But this is obviously just a limitation because why exist as a slave to these things, needing them to be happy? What if you could be happy without these things, wouldn't you fear losing them? So now imagine an existence always feeling the same way as those things would make you feel. But again don't limit yourself, now create the best pleasure and bliss forever, that never ends and can never be taken from you. Wait a second... now what's the point of doing anything at all? Everything that I could experience, perhaps a sunset, tv, nature, music, it all becomes arbitrary. These things would no longer be of value to me because I have removed myself from the limitations of needing them to improve my experience of life. Would there even exist a concept of "something better" because anything I could experience, even physical torture, I could choose to enjoy infinitely? What then would be the point of doing anything? To me, the answer seems that there wouldn't be. Only... if of course you could be satisfied. Think about it, if I could create the best thing I could imagine, why could I not just imagine something better? Then create that, then imagine something better, and so on for infinity. So paradoxically, would I be infinitely bored or satisfied forever? But what does this have to do with us? Obviously, I do not have infinite power right now. But yet, I am still trying to improve my existence and chase after whatever I think is "better". In an infinitely imaginative scenario, does that not entail giving up all my wants and just loving that which I am experiencing right now? Because by definition, wanting a different experience than now limits my enjoyment of existence to that experience. But this requires me to be able to love everything infinitely in the first place. If I am being honest it is very difficult to just sit down and love doing nothing for even an hour... but I can't imagine this for a week, a year, or for eternity. I don't feel like I have the capability of loving everything, unless that means me meditating in a cave for 20 years. What if meditating in a cave and detaching from all my desires isn't actually the route to infinite love? How would I know? But what if I'm fooling myself and that isn't possible for me in this life? Shouldn't I be more realistic with my goals and pursue things that seem achievable? What do you think is best?

@Ramanujan Fyodor Dostoevsky

I have been contemplating for the last several months about identity and what I am. As most humans do, before this year, I had a concrete identity about things that I thought I could know about myself. I believed I was a human, a physical being, separate from others, something, not everything, and not nothing, etc. After watching some of Leo's videos and personally thinking about this stuff for myself I question and doubt the whole notion of being able to know what I am entirely. I hear a lot of new age spiritual "gurus" talk about how there is no boundary between self and other and in fact, everything is "one". I realize now how my mind has been fooling me into thinking the notion of "separateness" is a concrete fact. I realize now how the concept of a boundary between any objects that I conceptualize in my mind is not necessarily a real thing that exists other than the fact that I am imagining it. So I tried shifting my identity into believing that maybe I am everything that exists and not some finite being. However, then I started questioning the notion of "nothing". How could I ever conceptualize nothing, because whatever I imagine to be nothing, is something. If I imagine nothing to be darkness, then the black that I accompany with that darkness is something. I realized that I could never conceive of a true nothing because then that is a something. But consider what I just said about the notion of "everything". If there are no boundaries between things then what I conceive to be "nothing" must be included in my definition of everything. So then I shifted my identity to be nothing and everything. But hold on. How can I even know what I am in the first place? I mean what does it even mean to be me? How would I ever know that I am everything rather than just a body? Or vice versa. How would I know I am a body rather than everything? What would prove to me that I am anything at all? Some of you may argue that I must be everything because my notion of a boundary between self and other is illusory. But how would I know that? See, recently, I was just assuming this whole time that the boundary between self and other was something totally imaginary. But what if there exists a real boundary that separates me and something else? Or what if it is merely imaginary? How would I prove to myself either scenario? How can I know anything about what I am at all? Because the moment I try to define myself as something, anything, or nothing, I could just be fooling myself into assuming that I am any of those things. Additionally, how would I know when I have proved to myself that I have experienced evidence of what I am? I could define anything as evidence of what I am but I don't seem to have a way to verify if that evidence has any bearing on who I am or if it is imaginary. I would love to have a friendly discussion to anyone who would like to respond. I am very open-minded and would love for new perspectives on this subject.