Salaam

Have you ever had moments where you were feeling ten-feet tall and then caught a look at yourself in the mirror and had every good feeling come crashing down? I used to tear myself apart for how I looked. I still remember the first ever crashing down feeling that shattered my world. It was a Middle School Halloween Dance, where puberty and being over-weight came together in an unholy matrimony with hyper self-consciousness and a form-fitting ninja costume. In my life I’ve dieted from 260lbs down to 148lbs over the course of 2–1/2 years and that still didn’t satisfy the pain I caused myself for not being enough. I’m hovering around 210lbs now and it’s definitely not all muscle, but I feel great when I look in the mirror and I’d like to share some practices and changes I brought into my life that helped me make that happen. The first I put in place was changing how my prejudice was towards other people. I realized that all prejudice, whether directed at ourselves or others comes from the same source inside us. It’s like a cup with a certain volume of capacity that shrank or enlarged depending on how much we exercised it. The more I used it towards other people, the larger it became and the more intertwined we became, this habitual response of tearing people down. Only till in those moments alone, for that same habit to resurface and turn its knives on me. I didn’t just stop tearing people down and dismissing them when I saw their “flaws”. I had to replace that action with something else and that was seeing beyond their differences that I was judging so harshly. Taking the next step after that habitual reaction to look into their eyes and feel their humanity. Slowing down and feeling their presence and getting a read on who they were, rather than how I judged. Doing this chipped away at my capacity for prejudice and brought a new and different action to the table that I would slowly start directing towards myself. Instead of “how did I look?” it was “how did I stand?”. Recognizing the hint of a smile, the light in the eyes, a firmness, found within a vibrant self-respecting person, that I began to see in others and also within myself. Slowly changing from the binary categorization of good or bad, to details and specifics about how our character and personality expressed itself through our features. While I was chipping away at my capacity for prejudice I was also working on my relationship with superiority and inferiority. I recognized that they were extremes connected together in a feedback loop and they were clouding my emotions and view of myself. I had things I excelled in that made it all too easy for me to feel superior and that become an emotional refuge when the things I sucked at reared their heads. So my feelings of inferiority would push me to raise higher the ceiling of my “greatness”, which just made a higher perch to come crashing down from. I had to find a more stable and grounded feedback loop to make my home and that led me to confidence and being humble. Humble is easy to understand, but what do I mean by confidence? It means that I was focused on the trust and security I had inside me for what I could already do. What I earned honestly, through experience and the gaining of adaptations by pushing my comfort zone. I didn’t indulge in trains of thought like how great or bad I was. I instead focused on what I could do and what it took and then I focused on being humble towards the long path I still had in front of me for the things I haven’t done and would need to succeed. Managing the distance I felt from my goals with how close the capabilities I needed to reach them with were in my grasp. I focused on the work and the tools I had, rather then dwelling upon how it felt not being there yet. I went on an emotional diet where I wouldn’t identify as great and feel that rush lifting me up and I wouldn’t identify as shit and feel that crushing weight, pushing me down. It was instead “look at all you’ve done” feeling the moments with self-trust instead of excitation as the process of how far I’ve come showed me the same steps I could take to continue far into what I could one day be. It gave me clarity as well as added emotional stability. Feeling good, bad, and great come about as a “status check” validating who we are and how well we meet our societal or self-imposed conditions for success, but it can grow easily into an over-indulgence and an extreme one that can destroy lives. Just think of some of the horrible things people have done to others to justify and reinforce their “greatness”. The higher you get, the higher the requirement to stay there and rather then earn that height honestly, it’s all to easy to leverage that gap by exploiting others and ourselves for those “hits of greatness”. I didn’t want to live like that because the feeling of home was more precious to me than the importance of feeling greatness. And that was the final thing that helped me so deeply with my self-prejudice. When you are as blessed as I am to have a wonderful Wife to create a home with, you can calm down in a lot of ways as a person. Your aims and considerations change, because you know what real intimacy feels like and that replaces the things you chase, because the roar of the crowd can’t hold a candle to the whisper of your loved ones, welcoming you home. Plus, it’s harder to treat yourself so harshly and tell yourself those same stories of self-hate when you have a person mirroring a better reality. You see the qualities it really takes to create a beautiful space with another person and how it’s so much more then the way we look. We humans are by no means an island and having love and support that we can trust enough to accept over our self-castigation can go a long way towards helping us heal. Whether you turn to your partner for support, friends, or family the important thing is being able to trust in how they see you. So they can ground you in a view of who you are that isn’t tainted by a history of self-negativity and show you that the extreme conditions we set on ourselves for peace of mind, aren’t the only ones that matter. You can have love, even with your “flaws”, you can be desired, you can reach and be the person you want, regardless of how you look. I hope this helps others as much as it helped me. There are many layers to prejudice and it's a long road peeling them all back, but with every success comes peace and love and a closer connection with others and ourselves. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions or trouble-shooting concerns. I'll be happy to help

My Wife hardly ever wears make-up, especially around the house and that doesn't bother me at all. I'm in love with her and who she is, and that's what I enjoy being able to see, beyond just how she looks. A lot of times, women will wear make-up and it masks their personality. They may appear as "hot" or whatever, but that hotness, is an emotional dead-end compared to when a woman's spirit and personality shines through and it touches your own spirit, creating a diverse, mutual shared experience. It's like, there are many layers to a woman and make-up can crank up the intensity of the first layer, but at the expense of shrouding or masking the other layers and nuances of who she is (when it comes to how a guy responds emotionally and sexually towards a woman). When I was immature and still growing as a man, I didn't understand this, because I didn't have that intimacy and connection with a woman's other layers that I only got from living and loving with a woman for years as my partner and best friend. Now though, I always absorb the stimulation and reactions of that first layer and look deeper for the other layers, because they show me who she is as a person and what kind of stuff she can feel and share with me. Those are the sides you enjoy about a person. The way she'll smile when she's a little nervous, but is holding onto her courage before stepping on stage or going to a meeting. The way she'll close her eyes and tilt her head back to absorb the sun, gently warming her face. What she looks like when she's concentrating on writing, with her brow furrowed, as her hands play over the keyboard. I find that the more I mature and fall deeper in love with my Wife, the more I appreciate and am gratified by all women. I think it's the balancing of my natural feelings towards them that comes from strengthening my emotional connections and responses to who women actually are. The visual differences from one women to another on that first layer... they're really not that big of a deal and I find that what I used to think was "flawed" or "ugly" before was really just my own prejudice and distance from who women actually are tainting my feelings, rather than any real fault on their part.

Thanks Steph Yea, I agree, these real life changes are what I'm here for as well. Well, for the weight loss, yea I was fully immersed, invested, and focused on that for awhile. I didn't just learn how to diet I learned about the role of leptin in the body, ghrelin, peptide YY, and nutrient partitioning. I was on bodybuilding websites and talking with a lot of guys trying to go or be pro. I'd work out 5-6 times a week and sometimes do 2-a-days on the weekend. It became my whole world for those years. Which, was a pattern I've had since a kid, getting fascinated about a thing and then consuming it learn anything and everything about it. Now-a-days though I cycle through things and focus on them as my body presents it to me. Like, I've got 13 foundational elements of capability that I work on that help me in everything I want to learn or do and I work on them as my body brings them around in their next revolution. One day it might be a focus on sensitivity and as that grows from my day's efforts, I then wake up the next day and my body is telling me I have to work on resiliency. Then the next day Flow and then the next day Differentiation. They are all inter-connected and work in synergy, so changing one impacts all the rest and causes the next one up to naturally present itself. The huge momentum boost came from my devotion to connective tension, which also brought about my energy awakening. Increasing my capacity with that, is what created that amplification effect and helped me map out on even deeper levels what was going on in the invisible structures behind my mind, finally leading me to mapping out those 13 foundational elements of growth I mentioned above. It gave me the opportunity to one day master learning on a new meta-level while also gaining access to things I needed not just for learning, but application and dealing with life. I'm not saying I have mastered learning, the road is long on that one, but my success gave me a platform to learn and adapt to anything I wanted because I had a large amount of the core capabilities needed for learning anything all developed and inter-connected up to a certain point. If your wondering what I mean about connective tension, here is something I wrote a day or so ago in another thread. Hopefully this helps. Connective tension... It's like... picture a magnet and a piece of metal. If you hold the metal close to the magnet, but don't let them touch you will feel a pulling/tugging action that only stops once the metal and magnet touch and attach. So when something is sitting in your mind and doesn't leave until you have closure, it's acting like that metal and magnet, where it's close enough to be in your awareness, tugging for closure, but not so close that it's attached and the tugging has stopped. The closure is when the distance between your focus and the information you need to "find out about it" (and draw a conclusion about it and categorize it) closes and completes. It's like a kid excited for Christmas and that excitement or tension only resolves once the gifts start to be unwrapped. Closing the distance from the anticipation of that special day, to the experience of that day itself. The above also holds true with the conditions we place on ourselves for things and the distance those conditions create. The flavor of tension for feeling like happiness is out of reach can be a shitty tension to feel that people often characterize as suffering. But, that feeling fades once we feel happiness and we are close/attached/involved with it again. Lol, and of course it comes right back again once someone takes up the position of needing condition xyz for feeling happy or any other emotional status. Now if we extend this analogy of magnet and metal further, we understand that certain things pull us, certain things push us, and certain things are meh and don't activate us at all. This range of flavors is governed by chemistry. Our chemistry at a given time determines our attraction and fascination about things and the generation of interest. If you change your chemistry, you change the composition of your fascinations... but that of course depends on the degree of change in chemistry. Oh, I also had a journal here I did for a bit that kind of shows how I'd cycle through different elements as they presented themselves. I'll find a link for you.

I've had experience dealing with this myself so some things I've looked at that you might find helpful: Differentiating between THE Truth and my truth. Your energy changes when you have clear boundaries between the two. It changes that compulsion a person might have when they figure something out for themselves to want to proclaim it to the world as an authority on THE truth. Instead of teaching, think of it as sharing. This softens the whole authority vibe, plus it intimates that we connect with the people first, before diving into "this is where your wrong and let me show you what is right". Keep a tally for yourself of how often your conversations are intellectual versus heart/connection/caring based and attempt to right the balance if there is an imbalance. Check with yourself to see which one is more inherently attractive to you as this will signal the orientation of your current chemistry. It's not a good thing if the majority of your conversations resemble lectures. Instead sprinkle it with checking in on people, getting excited for them, or sharing struggles with people, and not talking about right or wrong but how people are feeling. Also, that sense of humor and fun I mentioned to you in that other thread plays a part here. Spend some time joking around with people and being goofy or whatever. Make that a part of your identity, through consistent, long duration practice. Check to see if you have any inferiority inside yourself that you seek refuge from with your intellectual prowess. Also, check to for any superiority attachments riding along as baggage with your view of your intellectual capacities. I hope these help in some way. Good luck

Thanks Well, near everything in life is a mixture isn't it? So both a gradual process with sprinkles of pivotal moments. I'd say a defining moment was being arrested and going to jail and then prison. That period of time encompasses both hitting a bottom or wall for me and then getting back up from it shaken from my illusions and conclusions about things with a renewed determination. Im a fighter in my spirit and that got energized from my near death and near catastrophe experience. I was humbled but also more focused. Determined that even if was caged I would make something of my body and mind and inside those places I'd be free, my choices my own. I was imprisoned for a little under 2 years and hit the ground running once I got out. It's been ten years now since my release and four years since I had my "energy" experience that changed my life forever. So, really I had two defining moments that represented different tiers or layers of capability and growth. So to answer your first question 2-1/2 years for the weight loss, another 2 or so years for my strength reaching elite level. And once I had my energy awakening growth started happening at a much more accelerated rate with major internal changes happening during the past 4 years. I was meditating for two years prior to that awakening and had stilled my mind as a base state within one year within that frame. That awakening was like attaching an amplifier to everything I did. Hopefully that makes sense, if you need me to clear something up just let me know.

Thanks Zip and good luck! Yea man, I have made my way from near zero to abundance in so many areas of life. That's one of my favorite aspects to share about myself with people, because it didn't help when I was working through all this to look at heroes and success stories who already looked like they had it all. I just had a bit of spirit and determination and built everything else up around that, till I had an abundance of all the foundational things I needed for deep success.

I've changed in a lot of ways in my life... Physically I've dieted down from 260lbs to 148lbs and then built back up to 175lbs and elite status on the deadlift (lifting three times my bodyweight). Lol, I'm heavier and fatter then 175lbs now, but I don't mind. I used to destroy myself with self-prejudice because of how I looked... even when I lost weight the pain was still there. But, I cured and out-grew that self-prejudice so now, even though I'm not the fittest I've ever been. I truly love and enjoy who I am and what I look like. I can see where I can improve without feeling those knives of prejudice come out to tear me up. I've gone from a loner, kind of introvert nerdy kid, to an international drug importer and convicted felon whose fought 4 people at the same time and won, faced goverment agencies having me at gun-point, and plenty of other challenges and hardships. I've gone from being a convicted felon to a successful business manager who brought in over $14 million in contracts last year. I come from a family with a history of depression and essentially "cured" myself of it by out-growing the connections depression uses to internalize within us (been over 3 or 4 years since I've felt it and I deal with a lot of stress and challenge). I've gone from my previous past, of being an over-weight loner to now being a man who is deemed to be very attractive to women and very capable with seduction. My Wife couldn't be happier and so many women tell me that they use me as the standard for deciding what kind of guy they want to build a relationship with. My Wife and I were even given a radio show to talk about the success of our relationship. I've gained a high self-efficacy with all 9 kinds of intelligence, when before I was only above average with logical and linguistic. I've slowed my body and pace down to such a level of calmness and deep stability, that people can feel the contrast as soon as they touch me. I've gone from having no passion to an abundance of it I've gone from not caring about life at all, to caring so much that I feel a deep responsibility for the world and humanity around me. Sex... oh my god. Lol, my orgasms have changed so much over my life. Man, there is so much I could write here. Change is a slow process, it's like digging yourself out of a 10 foot hole with a toothpick, but that toothpicking also has momentum and a snowball effect to it, the deeper and farther you go. Plus, the more you grow and change, the less you splash around wasting your efforts on things that don't create change. So you're more efficient and effective, while also being able to create more impact. The greater the impact, the deeper the internalization and consequent change.

Connection, closeness, passion, meaning, fun, pleasure, success, love, care, investment, the expression and application of all that I've built, discovery, potential, the next horizon, curiosity, wonder, mystery, novelty, responsibility, adaptation, resistance, humanity... What is the action behind the word motivation? To me it is the spooling of a force inside us, pulling or pushing a person towards involvement. I don't focus on hollow, empty things. Instead I've got a diversity of deep, universal energies I can involve myself with in so many facets of life. It's amazing really.

I often have no thoughts going on in my head unless I consciously start narrating about a focus. It's just changing feelings and sensations of energy that I can influence with direct wordless intent (inner action). I don't have that monkey mind chitter-chatter of constant narration that I used to have and other people talk about. It's not all it's cracked up to be however. It opens you up to new challenges and issues, because that chitter-chatter also serves as an anchor for a particular zone of flow and dipping below that zone of flow when other "negative" characteristic are present can suck majorly.

Humor is the counter-balance to being serious in my experience. But, it's not that effective as a one-off kind of thing. You need to cultivate it as a practice of looking at the humorous side of things. Find the funny side of normal things in life, so that comes easy, then find the funny side in things that might be painful or aggravating to you, and then find the funny side in things that you find to be very important (that intense feeling of importance and attachment to it is a clue or signal for the application of balance). Each of these actions has a chemical build-up within our bodies that changes over time and effects our habitual responses. If a person has a build-up of self-importance and certainty for instance, dedicating a month of practice to seeing the humor in yourself will change that build-up and balance out that over-serious disposition. This is field and stress tested as practically applicable and successful by the way. I watch my emotional levels to manage my rapport with things and often times practice humor and goofiness to balance out the deep, serious, and often painful things I work on in life.

On a fundamental level what makes a story? It has to have at least three parts right? What some would call a beginning, a middle, and an end, but for the purposes of pleasure we’ll call them something different in a second… but, first an exercise. On the tip your finger there is a stretch of skin between your fingernail and the pad of your finger that feels softer and less “grippy” than the pad of your actual finger tip. Take that spot and trail it gently across the skin of the wrist of your inner arm. Draw slooow looping lines with your finger up your inner arm, to your outer arm, and then back in again, cycling slowly from the feel of inner skin to outer as you make your way toward the crease in the pit of your elbow where it bends inward. As you get to that crease, slooooow down even more and draw out the sensation and tension that occurs as you trail along the edge of that crease, without actually breaking the crease and touching the center of that soft skin at the pit. Instead, slowly draw your finger down the edges of that crease to the soft skin past your elbow and along the inner arm towards your arm-pit. Notice how the feelings change as you cycle through the different kinds of skin and how they build upon each other like a story. How you can create an open-loop, that builds and builds if you loop back and run along the edges of the crease in your elbow pit, increasing tension. What this is about is learning to differentiate between the skins sensitivity types and how you can then stack those differences to create an experience. 1. Skin along the inner arms, thighs, etc. 2. skin along the outer arms, thighs, etc. 3. Skin along the folds and creases of the body like the back of the knees and elbows, crease of the neck, clitoris, nipples, penis, inside the vagina (g-spot), etc. (notice how the most sensitive parts of us are hidden in the creases and corners of our body. Like how the penis and clit actually have specialized ways of retracting and hiding) If those three types are the elements of pleasure, then: #1 introduces the pleasure (beginning of the story or chapter) #2 grounds and contrasts the initial pleasure (middle) #3 is the climax that you edge along, building tension and anticipation (climax or end) So if we made it like music or a rhyme scheme, the exercise above would have a rhythm of 1,2,1,2,1,2, Threeeeeee,1,2,1,2,Threeeeee, 1,2,1,2, 3 ad infinitum What we did with the arm, you can do with many other parts of the body, like the neck, thighs, or lips. The lips actually have 3 different kinds of skin as well, and as you kiss you can cycle between the different parts of the lips brushing against each other and build tension. Further, much like a book can cycle between characters as it goes from chapter to chapter, a seducer can cycle between different body parts, leaving open loops of pleasure and tension that increases each time you return back to the character/body part you had previously left on a cliffhanger. In effect, with the understanding above, you can leave every part of his or her body a tingling open-loop cliff-hanger of a story aching for that final tipping over the edge into climax. Plus, each area on the body has different intensities of sensation for their respective 1,2, and 3 parts. The difference between a woman’s arm and her vagina for example. But, make no mistake playing with this pattern just on the arm can be enough to make a woman orgasm, especially when you add pain to the mix (biting the inner wrist just as the pleasure edges, which adds a new dimension to the story, especially when it’s unexpected). BUT, what I gave you above is just the bones of the story. The flavor and energy of the story comes from your intent to touch and the emotion behind it and the overall cohesion of the “story” depends on your ability to keep a rhythm, differentiate that rhythm, and make of it music. Think back on the emotional space you were in when you first tried my exercise. What happens if you slowly breathe and relax and fill yourself with feelings of sex and pleasure? How does that change the experience? So, with the above, you’ve now got the bones of understanding, but authenticity, spirit, enjoyment, and rhythm will be the rest you need to really make your story sing. I hope this helps some of you all. It’s a joy to have the freedom and ability so that every touch can have a story and an identity. It changes your touch from some one or two-dimensional thing, to something much more that is a pleasure to share with others.

@Arkandeus Personally, I don't care about enlightenment. I've got access to it's space whenever I want, so it's no big deal. What I'm about is being able to change and adapt and evolve in any way I choose with actual physical or observable results. And for me that involves working with the actual force of connection and learning to play it like a musical instrument. Being able to sink into whatever subconscious layer I choose, communicate with it and influence the automated systems on that level and bring about change all the way down to my very DNA, while carrying out that action in a way that doesn't damage the very sensitive and fragile natures of those protected layers. I've had a lot of success with this focus, but it has threshold requirements in order to gain access to the spaces so we can properly learn and internalize these capabilities and understandings And until we meet these requirements, we cycle around on a lower level pattern, repeating the same shit over and over again, not even aware of everything that is still left to be discovered and learned behind that threshold. There is a tensile resiliency that has to be cultivated, to handle the tension that comes from holding multiple, inter-connecting layers and contrasts, not just mentally, but emotionally in order to properly understand some of these things in nature. Capacities that require a certain depth and breadth that takes years of expansion in order for it be able to contain these things. Down-shifts in the energetic wavelengths of a person that allow for a more stable base state and the ability to slow down the movement of shifting inner qualia and parse it with enough coherency and protection of integrity to make it's observation worthwhile and without unnecessary distortion. But, whatever who gives a shit. This isn't the place to attempt to share those things

@Scholar I defined evil as an action rather than a noun. To me evil is not a "thing" it's a description of a type of action with certain kinds of results and directions. I don't get where your coming from with your response to be honest, everything is a property of the universe. And disharmony or conflict is a status or pattern of movement, it's not an entity, and it's not conflict alone that has an "evil" status it is conflict paired with corruption and destruction that could be described as "evil". Two football teams are in "conflict" when they square off and play against each other, but that "conflict" isn't necessarily evil. It would only turn evil if a person on either team brought destruction AND corruption into the occasion (it has to contain an element of both). Willfully trying to maim or kill another, corrupting the agreed upon rules of the game, like a running back using a gun to shoot people on defense in order to score a touchdown. But, whatever you don't have to agree with me

When people talk of ego on here are they differentiating that in any way from identity? If not, I don't get this desire people have to "get rid" of their identity. Does it hurt that bad for people? I love my identity, and my desires have grown and matured over the years so that they include more than me. Personally, I am "I" and "We" at the same time. A part of everything, but while a part of everything, I am also distinct in my localized experience within everything. And that distinction need not be a hard or extreme distinction that takes me to the point of separation. Plus there are degrees and layers of both separation and connection. Even physically speaking, I can be connected by an ephemeral wave or weave of energy to everything in life, while still being physically distant from another person. Our skin may not be touching, but we are still connected, because there are different layers of solidity all interacting at the same time. So on some layers I'm connected to some degree and other layers I'm separate to some degree, which makes a binary yes or no answer useless.

Perfect is such a weird word Are there localized kinds of perfection? If the universe is perfect, is it perfectly horrible as well as perfectly beautiful? If you put a human out in space and the temperature and pressure kills them, is it still valid to say that was the perfect place for that human being? Why is the universe still expanding if it's perfect? Personally, I see perfect as a concept created by humans under pressure and stress, creating extreme idealizations. It lacks nuance and practical applicability. It requires an end destination, when absolute endings don't actually exist, instead we have "soft endings" or the point in where our mind comes to a halt about a particular topic because it is too limited to continue containing they gyrations of a particular change.

Thanks and good luck with your efforts as well Also, thank you for explaining your approach it helps me understand where your coming from. I used to be like that as well and maybe to some degree I still am... I guess what I'm saying is I think that approach is a necessary step in the learning process. In some respects, we kind of have to touch the edges, or the boundaries of a thing, before bringing it back in to work on the middle. In a very simple way it's like, builders working to build the perimeter of a house first, before they start working on the inter-connecting interior walls. For me, I have access to edges that will hurt or limit me if I follow them and attach to the extremes I'm capable of. So instead I focus on building in the middle for a myriad number of things, rather than becoming a spire of progress in one aspect. Basically I pattern my growth off of the goldilocks zone. Making it the zone or space in reality where human life has the highest potential for harmony, evolution, and spiritual expression. The goldilocks zone is where earth is in our solar system, close enough to the sun to support this diversity of life, but not so close that we burn up. A uncounted number of dimensions and aspects balanced to within that space of "just right for human life". That's what I do for my consciousness, mapping the untold number of inter-connected aspects and dimensions and harmonizing them so they are in that space of "just right". Fear, desire, pain, sexuality, fragility, brutality, beauty, undifferentiated everything... each aspect has an inter-connected zone of harmonious "just right" and in my experience we can find that space rather then seeking the eradication of these aspects. The Extreme Approach vs the Goldilocks Approach... but the first can be an eventual step to the second if a person finds that choice worthwhile. Ha, that's a tough one man. I'm trying to find a definition that is dynamic, but foundational enough to work universally, while not accidentally include contexts that it shouldn't. At first I was thinking "the corruption of trust" would make a good universal definition... but I think it still needs work. I guess if I was pressed to come up with a definition I'd say evil is "a twisting action that replaces harmony and growth with destruction and corruption". So sex can be a beautiful act that can be mutual and harmonious and bring about growth through emotional bonding and the physical growth of new life. However, it can be twisted and made evil by acting out sexuality in a way that destroys a person via rape and corrupts their ability to have healthy sexual interactions later in life. Fighting or violence, while brutal can be a protective action that halts and contains the efforts of people seeking to spread corruption and destruction or it can be the spreading of corruption and destruction if a person uses violence for the exploitation of others, which would in turn point to a desire that was twisted and corrupted to lead a person to such a choice. Hitler for instance had his insecurities and inferiority twist him towards eradicating whole groups of people in order to satisfy a twisted set of conditions inside himself that he set up as some goal post in order to achieve inner peace of mind. But, of course it didn't lead towards that peace and satisfaction because it was twisted to only lead towards destruction and further corruption. Healing I guess, would be the untwisting of destruction and corruption. Do you see any holes or inconsistencies in that definition? I'd welcome any critiques. I'm still thinking about how intent mediates the definition. Like what if someone accidentally or unknowingly acts in a way that creates corruption and destruction? Is it still evil through negligence of consideration? It's such a hard thing to pin down, because everything is a dynamic mixture and there are degrees and intensities of twisting actions that then insert itself into the mix, making it hard to properly distinguish.

@eskwire It's all good, I can understand the frustration. No worries. I wish I could explain to people how there are evolutionary firewalls to expanded cognition that require increases in energetic capacitance in order for the brain to exponentiate it's processing power. But, even that sentence won't make shit sense to people. How do you get people to accept and understand split-second shifts that occur under our consciousness that are incredibly complex and interconnect many different automated systems within the body, which all effect and color your cognition and recollection within that moment? Do you know how much training and adaptation it takes to even attempt such a thing? But, who cares, in other people's minds it's not even worth the consideration because it's not a part of their reality. I understand that and I don't expect anything or blame people because of it. Lol, whatever. It used to bother me a lot... the costs of success. Anyways, you can believe me or not, but I understand "enlightenment" or "non-duality" experiences. I call it undifferentiated everything and can access that space whenever I want. But, unlike other people here who seek to be in that space all the time and see that as freedom I see it as the yin to the yang of differentiation. I choose both and am both and reside in both. I superimpose them onto each other and let their interactions inform and help me evolve. I don't dismiss it, I include it and harmonize it with everything else. But, again who cares. Some people will just want non-duality and other people might resonate with my choice and wonder at a path where there is an opportunity for superposition and consistency with both physical reality as it is commonly understood to be, plus so much more. Do I think mine is preferable? Sure. Superior? Yuck, I don't indulge in superiority and inferiority paradigms.

There is a lot of freedom to be found in self-responsibility... in some cases taking on that responsibility is the only way to move towards being free. Has anyone else noticed that in their lives? I've been through a lot of things in my life and carry a lot of scars on my soul, but I am not a victim and I am not bound and chained by the pain and circumstance. I own my pain and I own my challenges, getting to work, to grow and become more capable so I can face and handle them and move forward along my chosen path. And when I out-grow those challenges and take on something new, the capacities and adaptations stay with me and I have more within me to exercise and express. It's how I've out-grown things like depression and other stuff that used to keep me down. Facing challenge = more capability = more choice. Much better than wallowing and giving up responsibility which = less choice and less capability. I feel like life is as much about fitness of spirit as it is physical and mental fitness. The weight, the intensity, the pain, they can all be lifted and changed if faced, while holding firmly the reins of the power we have to do something about it.

@SOUL Lol, dude you used the words disown and dis-identify which is a severance of connection or association and consequently can be properly inferred as a disassociation (the state of being disconnected). So, I'm a self-righteous bigot now because I reject the strategy of disowning and disassociating from self-responsibility? I never said my way was the only way. I said I can't condone or accept your presented strategy for the reasons I cited in earlier posts. Do you notice how I keep my critiques centered on the life strategy and don't go calling you names and making assumptions about your character? How about you try to behave in a similar way regardless of the actual content of discussion? If you can't meet that standard that please kindly see your way out of my thread.

@Socrates I feel you man and I don't know if they'll ever clarify it for you or even attempt it. @eskwire lol, besides the snark and the strange opinions you seem to have about how I operate, those are interesting questions! Yay, we're talking about real life finally But, a couple clarifications first. "Eradication of evil" is a primitive focus that's reactionary and extreme in my opinion (no offense, but you asked for my view). You don't destroy evil, you build harmony and stability through the evolution of our capacities, which gives people the choice and the capability to choose something better then evil. Rather than focusing on eradicating one thing, we instead focus on building and developing a whole host of foundational elements that branch out and interconnect with each other and depend on each other for the capability needed to consistently choose and maintain better options then "evil" even in the face of intense stress and scarcity. Basically you outgrow "evil", just like a person can outgrow depression and other issues. Second thing, YOUR plan (not everyone's plan) to "get liberated" and "eliminate evil within yourself" has not been clearly explained, especially when it comes to its actual application in the face of intense stress and scarcity. The scope of this life strategy always seems to fail in addressing this side of life and is a big part of why Socrates started this thread in the first place. This view, this strategy will not gain acceptance from skeptics if it can't hold up to a basic stress test. But anyways, my plan revolves around those foundational elements I briefly mentioned above and their actual application in real life. Building the capacities and adaptations for each element, mapping out their inter-connections, harmonizing their points of conflict and incoherence, and expressing or channeling that goldilocks zone of inter-connectivity in a way that protects potentiality and integrity while cascading along the five realms of health, choice, capability, expression, and connection. I've been working my ass off in that respect for over a decade and have achieved some pretty amazing things for myself and others. Things that I share and give to others in not just my radio show, but in workshops, retreats, one-on-one sessions, and more informal interactions. Plus, my writings, articles, books, and videos I'm working on. There are many people who I've helped that have experienced immense healing and change. People suffering from sexual abuse, depression, mental and emotional trauma, relationship issues, identity issues, masculine and feminine balance, fear, loneliness, suicide... you have no idea of how much time and energy my wife and I devote to helping people heal and empower themselves. And not just from a distance, but actually inviting people into our home or stepping into tumultuous situations to help people when things are hard and messy. We do our work in the trenches and the mud of real life and people are grateful for it and tell us how we keep their hope alive about love being real and dreams being achievable because we live and hurt and heal and grow honestly. We touch all sides of life, the brutal and the beautiful and we succeed, no matter the pressure or difficulty. I do all this while still working a full time job and using my abundance from my success in that job to provide a home and aid for people who need my support. I don't just sit here and isolate myself, disparaging people like some armchair quarterback or backseat driver. I risk myself and invest and apply effort. Making things better. So yup, if you have any other questions just ask, the plan is huge and multi-faceted and always evolving. It has to be, because it aims to encompass the harmonization of all aspects of humanity and the world around us. @aryberry You seem to assume that I'm overly attached to the concepts of good and evil, when I'm not. I'm focused on the actions and consequences and pressures that drove life before those words even existed. Being blind or unseeing of the concepts of good and evil don't change those fundamental issues. Can you handle a scarcity of resources and the pressure of that scarcity to such a degree that you can still cooperate and not exploit others around you? Can you handle rejection from another person and not retaliate? Can you handle your desires for energy, procreation, and expansion without harming those around you? Can you give as much as you take? Are people and the world happier, healthier, and more energized around you? Can you protect those beings who are newly arrived to the physical realm and depend on the shelter of others to grow enough to contribute and care for themselves? Can you handle the fact that human beings are still evolving and still carry "flaws" or vulnerabilities that must be balanced, developed, and harmonized? Each of these questions come with conditions and stresses that must be faced and adapted to, that do not happen just by being blind or un-seeing to the concepts of good and evil. They don't automatically come from sitting and meditating all day or experiencing moments where everything is undifferentiated everything. There is a process that includes more than the dropping of concepts. It requires action and involvement and many other things. Not passivity and isolation. @Scholar Not liking or not wanting something is a poor definition of evil in my view. Life is more dynamic then that. Just because I don't like the thought of eating brussel sprouts right now does not make them evil. It sounds like your mistaking the feeling of repulsion for evil Also, feelings are signals and a form of communication, they have a reason for they way they act and express and can be pretty damn coherent if harmonized with. Like their really good with describing distance, contrast, intensity, and when you can read the mixtures within feelings, and the different layers and nuances, things can really get cooking. Pressure, flow, composition, contrast, captivation, distance, direction... I read all that stuff like braille within my body. It's pretty damn peaceful within my body to be honest. But, that's because I have a great connection with my feelings and a high degree of communication and mutual cooperation with them.

@Socrates Did you notice, that throughout this whole bout of talking these people never gave you an explanation of what they'd actually do in real life? As soon as you ask them about it, they switch topics and go back to their mental constructs, avoiding any talk of its effectiveness in action. Their whole philosophy requires a sheltered space for their mental contortions and extremism. But, life is about more then the space where people have their little seated meditations. Their disconnected from change and difference and the conditions of physical reality. The bottom line is there are conditions our body adheres to in order to sustain it's life, and because we have a desire to be alive, we continue to put in effort that makes those conditions more sustainable. Things like breathable air and drinkable water, but also trust, coherency, and cooperation. Can we step into a space of un-differentiated everything where those conditions become indistinguishable? Sure, it's a nice space to be in and a great counterbalance to getting over-enmeshed with conditions which can create distance and separation. But, eventually you have to go back into the world with it's conditions and dynamics and live and act and deal with things. There is a yin and yang to the conditional and unconditional world, but many people don't seem to understand that and are a pendulum in suspension, attached to one pole as they seek to negate and dis-own the other.

Yup, a person should be able to disagree with a life strategy they think is unhealthy and ineffective and have little respect for, while still being respectful towards the person espousing that view. Even while the other person in the face of rejection of their view, doesn't maintain that same level of respect. It's not that hard man.

Sure, view life how you want with the strategies you want. But, why the anger and the assumptions about me? I gave you my opinion about disassociation as a life strategy, that was a respectful disagreement I believe. I said nothing directly about you. I have no knowledge of the type of life you've lived and how sheltered or naive about things you may or may not be, but my example was not just some contrived hypothetical. It's a real possibility, brutality is a facet of nature. It sucks, but it's a reality that illustrates the importance of taking action for yourself. I've lived a life that's witnessed acts much worse than a fistfight and I care about putting in effort so the world around me doesn't have to have those things happen to as great a degree. But, regardless of all that how would you handle that scenario with the life strategy you've described in your posts? How does it handle the grittier parts of life? Anyways, you seem to assume I approach this from some place of desiring total control, based from a single sentence in my last post. I guess that's understandable, but really how I approach making things better is through communication, harmony, and the influence that comes with creating a better and more attractive alternative for myself and the people around me. I have a high degree of "control" within my body and outside it because I have a high degree of cooperation and mutuality. And the more of that you can create and share with people the better things become. At least in my experience. And a couple quick things about "control" over the past and future. First thing is that choices can have a compounding affect over time. There are structures and capabilities inside us that shift and evolve based on the influence of those compounding choices. So a person can guide the direction of their future and have a sense of responsibility for it, if they wish. Second thing, while the past is fixed the vibration of its incorporations within us, its meaning, can change in tenor. If we wish we can make what can feel like a burden or stress an energizer or anchor for precious feelings and motivations. But anyways, it's just how I see things. I enjoy it immensely, you seem pretty happy with your way. Let's both take this as an opportunity to handle differences gracefully and move forward ?

@SOUL Well, I can't condone or recommend disassociation as a healthy or effective response for the cultivation of freedom. It doesn't make a person more capable or expand their capacities. Please keep in mind, freedom is not just about being unbound, it's about the expansion of potential, which requires certain levels of development for access. If I am laying on the ground and there is someone on top of me punching me in the face, disassociation is not going to work and not going to get me out or free me from that situation. For the sake of argument it might make me uncaring as I passively watch the damage being done to my flesh and bones, but I doubt that it would even do that, because it would have to over-ride the natural function of our nervous system for the signaling of trauma and the resultant cascade of bodily processes that release in order to heal and help me survive. Anyways, in order to get that person off of me, I will have to take control of my body and act to protect it. Choosing to be the primary cause in the rescue of my life. That is the definition of responsibility. "Having control over or care for someone... being the primary cause of something". I don't know about you, but the more I grow and the more abundance, capability, and freedom I have the more responsible I feel and become. Not just for me, but the whole world. That's how people naturally grow into authentic leaders and caretakers of this world and larger universe. Personally I enjoy being the primary influence over my life and taking the reigns of freedom and choice while handling the consequences that arise from it.

@Nahm Lol, well I've been living this way for over a decade so the shock has waned, but thanks