Vladimir

Wrong, this is the opposite of control. I've realized this thread and responses are an obvious example of "spiral dynamics", where different stages of development aren't able to grasp the stages above them.

Visited a placed called "Cloud Temple" yesterday and met with a spiritual teacher named Rob and his much younger wife named Lisa. The place took place in a multi million dollar mansion on top of the mountain with gorgeous views and castle-like interior boasting enormous windows to behold the mountains and nature sight-seeing everywhere from the inside. Rob turned out to be an entrepreneur, a very rich guy. I'm a full blown empath and have the ability to immediately tell if the person I'm meeting has embodied what they're preaching, as the discussion proceeded, my intuition and first impression about what Rob is like, turned out to be correct. The guy is obese, unhealthy, boring to listen to, goes off on a tangent, dogmatic, arrogant, and feels privileged because of his "social status". I don't see any reason why his wife, who is in her 30's would be with him for any reason other than his wealth. He seemed knowledgeable, claimed to have achieved enlightenment multiple times, claimed he is able to "help others wake up" by verbally communicating something to them. When I asked the question if a person who doesn't meditate could become enlightened with his guidance he evaded the question for about 10 minutes, going off on a tangent and trying to explain some other ideas that weren't relevant to my question. Finally, after I persisted for a while, gave in and said that "it could be possible". At this point I was further confused because my idea of enlightenment was "thousands of hours of meditation" according to Leo, and here was a spiritual, enlightened teacher, claiming he could "wake anybody up" even if the person hasn't meditate in their entire life! At this point I started being more skeptical about him and further conversation and his claims deepened my skepticism. He proceed talking about his stories and just ranting on and on about where he's been, his experiences, traveling, which was all very boring to listen to and I felt like it wasn't a productive use of time. He also claimed to have psychic powers and told a story of how he predicted in precise detail of what exactly was going to happen to a woman that was going to travel to Thailand. To my question of "how were you able to predict what was going to happen to her in such intricate detail?" he quickly replied: "I can't explain it." His mansion was also a further indicator of how he is willing to splurge his wealth on luxury, instead of investing in projects that can greatly benefit humanity. Am I being too judgmental and critical about Rob? As the discussion approached a 3 hour mark, it was getting late and I was having an acute stomach ache from holding back my farts throughout this whole discussion. I remembered what Leo said in one of the videos: "If you're sitting on a bench and your ass hurts, and the person is late, this is an opportunity for growth". So I pushed myself to sit through it and as I was having my judgmental thoughts throughout this whole ordeal, I was aware of these thoughts and tried my best to develop compassion and loving kindness towards Rob and his wife. I think this shows I'm really growing, because I would be out of that house much faster, feeling angry like my time has been wasted and further criticize the host. However, I left the house feeling like I've grown from that discussion, seeing these people as teachers and the experience as a lesson. Meditation efforts and loving kindness are starting to pay their dividends!

I'm already doing many things in real life, including my own meetup group. All I'm trying to do here is expand the horizons and try to connect with more like-minded people because I thought this forum would be the most suitable place for it. I guess I was wrong to assume I would be able to start connecting with the kinds of people I'm looking for online without establishing any "cred" first. What I want is a master mind group for problem solving, not a bunch of egos trying to defend their positions and argue what's right and what's wrong. Here are some notes I took from Leo's video on spiral dynamics which explains what stage Yellow is, for people that have missed it:

You're missing what I'm trying to communicate to you brother. You're making assumptions, I'm not desiring any power, the only thing I'm desiring is fulfillment of my life purpose, which is directly inline with helping humanity, this is what Leo is doing and he is my role model. It's shocking to see a forum like this getting defensive about a proposal to work together, shows how divided we really all are, even at what should be higher levels of awareness. "If you don't use your skills to contribute to humanity, you're a useless human being." (paraphrasing) ~Leo

Still waiting for other systems thinkers to respond.

All I propose is that we work together, "один в поле не воин" - one person is not an army (Russian parable). I'm not even saying the CIA style vision is the way to do it, just an idea. A rather harsh response to a loving proposal to better humanity. I'm already doing most of the things you mentioned brother. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." ~Margaret Mead I understand it all starts with self actualizing myself, but that doesn't mean we should be alone on this journey. Working together will help ourselves first, and the world second. What really won't work is if we become self actualized and do nothing about it.

That's where systems thinking comes in. Enlightennati Not sure what your point is?

Smoked weed last night while meditating and put on music for opening up the chakras. I'm feeling different this morning, I think my mental faculties aren't working at 100%, though I feel more peaceful than usual. The trip itself while meditating was difficult to sit through, felt very intense sensations in certain areas of the body so I couldn't focus on any other areas but those. At one point, while feeling intensely warm, gross and vibrating sensation in the heart chakra, I started focusing on it, and thought "what if this is marijuana's way of trying to heal my heart?" So I focusd on the sensation more and more, until it started to feel like very warm feeling of love and light in my heart chakra and it kept expanding. Then the feeling connected through the heart to my dick and I felt intense sexual arousal from that, though the feeling didn't last very long. At one point I felt too tired and the body too exhausted to continue sitting through the meditation, so I just laid down on the floor and felt very relaxed and peaceful and continued in this half sleeping half meditating state for another 40 minutes or so. What makes it really difficult to sit through while high is the reduction of mental faculties, the mind seems to lose it's intellectual capacities and move over to the feeling of sensations. It also makes it difficult to concentrate on specific areas of the body, because some areas of the body intensify in feeling so much, is this marijuana's way of showing which areas of the body need to be focused on the most and healed? What's if it really activates nadis (energy points) of the subtle body and by focusing on those points I'll be able to make some new discoveries, instead of trying to control the situation, just go with the flow? Another thing that came up, was negative self talk, there were random crazy thoughts flashing, and they were pretty loud and annoying, like "people outside, by the jacuzzi can hear your music and think it's really weird", "people are going to smell marijuana and come knocking on your door, or they're going to call the police", and other paranoid thoughts like that. I just let them pass without being attached or assining any meaning to them and they seem to have dissipated after a while. I tried focusing on other areas of the body which felt intense, but it didn't seem to change like the heart chakra. Overall, I'm not sure if marijuana can be of any benefit if used in this way, I guess I could try again in about a month or so. The one thing that I really don't like is the reduction in mental capacities, because that makes it really difficult to be mindful of the present moment experience.

Thanks for the warning brother, I know I won't be panicking because I've done it before while meditating, though I half assed it in the past and ended up going to sleep.

I've had this angry feeling in my throat area for a very long time and I didn't even know where it was coming from, though I knew I held a lot of resentment for my parents. Well, during my recent meditations I started really contemplating this and I had a huge insight that I'm blaming and criticizing my parents a lot and I realized this anger might be the result of my constant subconscious judgement of my parents and it turned out to be true! So I think the best way of approaching this problem is to become mindful and think of all the past situations that triggered you, really see those memories and start feeling the anger rising in your body. Then just mindfully observe the sensations and be with them. Remember, you are your worst enemy and the most evil, ignorant person who creates suffering in their life and other people is YOU. You have nobody to be angry about by yourself. When you really embody this insight, you will finally have the freedom to choose what thoughts and emotions you're going to allow to manifest in yourself.

Bath with Epsom salt, meditation.

I'm going to try this tonight, the strain I'll be using is Passion Fruit because it's been sitting in the fridge for months and it's the only weed I have, this is from allbud.com: I'm really curious what it will do to my meditation because I'm already at a point where get into states where all I can feel is energy flowing through the body and lose all sense of physical body and environment, without using any substances. I'm a full blown empath so I'm very sensitive to energy in my body and I've been working with opening up chakras for the past couple of weeks during meditations. I'm also getting acupuncture weekly and doing yoga 3 times a week. I will set the intention for opening up chakras and healing because I still feel blockages in certain areas of the body, especially the chest and throat area and healing is what I need most right now in my life. I'll be listening to this music for opening up chakras, they have a pause between different chakras so I will know when to set my intention for opening up next one: I will let you guys know how it went tomorrow.