Vladimir

@Arkandeus Okay, you know what, I got it now, I accept everything, fuck all of this actualized.org wisdom, I'm going to sit at home, not buy any food or drink any water....because why not? I accept myself, why do anything? I accept it all!!! I'm going to sit here and slowly die of dehydration, I'm going to watch my body deteriorate and suffer great pain and slow, excruciating death....Why not???!! I accept it! It's okay because it's all good, this is the ultimate solution to life's problems, how could I be so blind before? Of course this is it! The holy grail of life has been found! No more hero's journey, I accept the defeat! No more need to do anything! Life purpose??? Pshhhhhhh, this is it! I found it! My life purpose is acceptance of everything! Slowly dying of dehydration because I accept it all is the answer! Thank you so much for this wisdom brother!

"acceptance always leads to love" - I must be delusional then to think that "acceptance" as you put it, could also lead to anything else but love. Unless we're talking different levels of acceptance like "real acceptance" vs "ignorant acceptance" in which case it would be nice to define it clearly....anyway What are you doing on this forum?

This all sounds very enlightening and is a great way of seeing things to accept reality for what it is. However, the reason we're all here, I hope, is to improve the quality of our lives, and when you present this view, many people might interpret it as acceptance for their laziness and complacency which will lead do much suffering, emptiness and even suicide, because well like you mentioned - it's all good and part of universe. This is why I'd be careful posting replies like this for the question of life purpose where it can be easily misinterpreted.

What I meant by doing is "spending time on". I don't know brother, I think it's important to make a distinction between many different levels of consciousness, people are at different stages of this journey, and for many, including myself, becoming as innocent as a child is nowhere near in sight. Meanwhile, the bills are piling up. So I think a better strategy would be to think how you can balance consciousness work with making a living, and even better, make the two complement each other and and work in synergy. You're still going to starve to death if you sit alone in the cave, relaxing.

But we're different from animals in a way that we are part animals, and part Gods, so we have a dilemma of Ego vs Truth. If you're not doing consciousness work, you will find yourself relaxing in Hell, I've been there when I accomplished all my financial goals. I think all life purposes should really be aligned with self actualization work, otherwise we delude ourselves into believing they are our life purposes but they are really just distractions and ways of making a living, and it turns into seeking yet another goal rather than a continuous journey. What makes it very difficult to realize life purpose these days is everyone's priority of making money to survive, and what's even more difficult is aligning life purpose with making a living from it, though Leo is one of the millions who managed to do this. I disagree with Leo when he says "making money becomes very easy" when you're following your life purpose, I think this further perpetuates the myth of "do what you're passionate about and the money will follow". Good luck making millions with "jerking off" as your passion. I think it's also important to distinguish between "activities" and "life purpose" - which is a skill that you master so you can perform at your peak ability. Yes you can be a yoga or meditation instructor, a lawyer, a teacher, a painter whatever....but if that activity doesn't let you perform at your peak potential and utilize your talents, then it's not really your life purpose, but another hobby or job. I don't think it's necessary to align your life purpose with making money. Raising the quality of consciousness could be all of our life purposes at this stage of humanity's evolution. Though the gold coins aren't going to start pouring down from the sky as we elevate our consciousness to a higher level, we still need to go and sweep the floor so we can get paid for it and ensure our animal self survival, such is the world we're living in today.

During a 3 hour contemplation and meditation session yesterday evening, I started understanding that illusion goes far deeper than I expected and it made me question just how distorted my idea of reality really is. The insight that our whole understanding of reality, who we are and everything we know is all in our heads made me question what other beliefs I'm clinging on to. We build our self image based on the past experiences, memories and knowledge which have been embedded into our long term memory with enough rehearsal. But what if we started practicing and thinking new thoughts and broadening our understanding of reality, learning new theories, trying out things that we haven't before, learning and experimenting. If we constantly remind ourselves about who we are and what reality is like on a sub-conscious level, wouldn't it be useful to become aware of those programs running in the background so that we can start changing them? One very powerful example is how our culture and most people today believe that true love can be found "out there", this idea is something people are reminded of constantly - in the movies, pop culture, songs ("baby I love you....I can't live without you..") dating scene, people get married -- all of this is a constant stream of programming information which embeds itself into people long term memory and becomes a deeply held belief -- "true love exists in the external world, I only need to get lucky enough to meet her." I'm starting to realize, I'm still holding this belief on some level, despite meditating for 2 hours everyday for the past 3 months and doing full time consciousness work of contemplating, self-reflecting, watching Leo's videos, unplugging myself from toxic information sources, reading books etc. How can you not hold this belief so strongly, if the most powerful source of information, especially innocent love songs and movies like "The Notebook" constantly program this into our sub-conscious for many years. I think this love message is actually creating a lot of suffering because people start pursuing love by seeking it in the outside world, while neglecting cultivating true love within themselves, which is where it's really found. Of course you can't market true, internal love for ourselves, it's intangible, you can't show it off to people, you can't post it on Facebook for everyone to be jealous of, like, comment and admire. So people, spend money, time, effort on trying to make themselves "fit" into the dating scene which promises increasing your chances of finding that true love some day. Many people have lowered their standards of love so much, out of desperation, that they're willing to accept much less than true love these days, which could fall as far as "like" or even "likes about him/her" outweighing "dislikes" about him/her - "We get the kind of love that we think we deserve" ~From the Perks of Being a Wall Flower, based not on the true feelings of love, but rather certain personality traits and positive feedback which would fall under our accepted "like" criteria, eg: makes me laugh, makes me comfortable, confident, intellectual conversations, understanding each other etc. With that said, I understand this is not as black and white as described here, no doubt people do fall truly in love, though it still falls far from the fairy tale story portrayed by the Hollywood. This can happen to people who already love themselves, though I'm not sure that even these people that find true love in a traditional sense of falling in love with each other, have cultivated true love for themselves, otherwise Romeo and Juliet wouldn't kill each other for losing one another. Then again, what would I know about love? I have never fallen in love in my life and I'm 34, I'm only starting to cultivate love for myself and beginning to feel what I've been missing out on my entire life. Joseph Campbell says: "the greatest hell one can know is to be separated from the one you love." Though is he referring to the one you love as yourself or another person?

I'm trying to build a strong foundation for learning before I completely immerse myself in all the books I want to read on my list. The reason is inefficient reading, learning, memorizing, understanding, comprehending and even thinking and I'm frustrated by it, so like a good programmer, I want to master the mind and optimize these learning systems before I move forward with "writing code" or reading books and understanding reality. So the books I recently finished reading are Systems Thinking, Unlimited Memory and Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, I also started reading How to Read a Book and Signs and Symbols Sourcebook. The first, most fundamental system that I want to redesign and optimize is the Thinking System, so I'm trying to apply Systems Thinking to Thinking System of the mind. All information is the obvious inflow into the system, which can be either external (text, audio, visuals - environment (nature, people, movies, pictures, symbols, colors, shapes)), or internal - memories, thoughts. Some of the outflow that the Thinking System creates are behavior (movement, emotions, reactions, verbal communication), reality, paradigm, self-image, memories (short term and long term) and other thoughts. I think the stock in this Thinking System would be "active thoughts", in a similar way how the CPU is processing information. There is also another component to "active thoughts" - conscious and sub-conscious, and to continue using the computer analogy, conscious thoughts would be an open program like "Adobe Photoshop" and sub-conscious thoughts would be like programs running in the background. Since we're concentrating on Thinking at this time, I think it's also important to be aware of the "link" between active thoughts, both conscious and sub-conscious and how they create other thoughts. Installing meditation software. So from this break down of the Thought System, we can already make some useful conclusions, for example: the more I become aware of sub-conscious thoughts, the more freedom I will have to choose what thoughts I want to add, subtract and what kind of links I want to create between those thoughts. (eg: I became aware that I was blaming my parents for bringing me up in a way that created a lot of judgement, critisizm and limited beliefs in me), by becoming mindful of those sub-conscious thoughts, I realized it wasn't my parents creating these negativities in my life anymore, but rather myself (I am my worst enemy). Another example is choosing how to link thoughts to other thoughts that I want: a thought about my parents suffering because of their alcoholism and negative lifestyle triggered (link) thoughts (or rather emotionally charged thoughts) of pity, guilt, and sadness. As I became aware of these negative links, I could further analyze all the reasons behind these negative thoughts triggered by my parents and I can now create new, positive thoughts (new links): compassion, unconditional love, understanding, motivation (healing myself will heal and help them). These are just a couple of examples of intervening (taking advantage of leverage points) within this system's internal information flows. Similarly, we can intervene in the external information flows: 1) unplugging from all toxic sources of information 2) establishing quality information flows which are as closely related to helping the system achieve it's goal (Leo's videos, books) 3) create new links in everyday objects in the environment (tree is a system, green is a color of nature, nature is creative, intelligent, diverse, sun is a symbol for - Stage Yellow systems thinking, it's the source of power (solar plexus chakra), yellow is a color of joy, happiness etc.) there are countless ways of how we can integrate everyday objects and nature and making them reminders for triggering emotions and thoughts that we want to trigger, instead of allowing our minds to create random associations (links) even if they are negative and don't serve our system's purpose. This is the reason I want to study Symbols and bought a book called Signs and Symbols Sourcebook which is already giving me a ton of ideas for more associations within the environment and more effective thinking, eg: space is a symbol for absolute infinity/god, dot is the symbol for beginning and end (the content within the absolute), vertical line is a symbol for physical body reaching for the reunion with the divine (spiritual development), trees are vertical so it can now be a constant reminder for enlightment. From the Systems Thinking, the best place to intervene is in the System Paradigm, this is what happened to me when I took 5g powdered mushrooms, just about four months ago, which completely shifted my whole view of reality and myself and the reason why I'm on an unstoppable hero's journey of transformation and personal growth right now. By applying the concepts from Thinking in Systems, we can look not only at the world's problems, but ourselves, and our minds as the most complex biological machines and start applying the concepts from the book to all the leverage points, redesigning and optimizing our systems to become super computers, super humans, sages, saints, geniuses, demigods!

I've started getting ready for recording videos for the YouTube channel and have been reading out loud for about 1 hour every evening so I can get better at speaking. As I was reading the text, I noticed my body was getting tense and even slightly painful in certain areas, it feels like blockages and makes it pretty difficult to read and express myself verbally. I started paying closer attention to these areas of the body and was exactly was making it difficult for me to speak the words and I ended up coming with a few techniques which worked quiet well and let me improve my natural voice. The first thing I tried is reading very quietly because I first thought it I might be hurting my vocal chords by trying to speak too loudly in an improper way, putting strain on certain parts of the vocal mechanism, that didn't help, I still felt a lot of tension around the solar plexus area, tightness in the chest and constriction in the throat. I tried varying the pace of reading, and dis-attach myself from the way I was sounding, but that only made me mispronounce a lot of words and reduced the level of enunciation. The next thing I tried is plugging one of my ears, this has worked surprisingly well, because all of the sudden my voice sounded so much better and I felt a lot more confident speaking the words. I varied it by plugging one ear and then the other with my finger to hear the difference and eventually came back to hearing with both ears which almost immediately made it sound like my old self again and made it difficult to read. What I suspect from this exercise is that I'm judging the way I speak as I'm reading on a very subtle, subconscious level, because I have been doing this as a habit for a very long time. I've lived with social anxiety most of my life here in San Diego, which is about 18 years so it's not going to be easy to undo all of that negative behavior, I just didn't realize, until now, that I was doing this even while reading out loud, by myself with nobody around. I explored this further, by putting my hands over my mouth, leaving plenty of space for the mouth to read and breath. This technique has worked even better, I started sounding really good and was able to use mouth and facial expressions to make the text come alive which I wouldn't normally do. I also immediately got more confident with my own speaking, the words flowed naturally and the usual blockages in the body seemed to have diminished. This technique of holding the hands close to the mouth may be one of the best techniques to get me to like my own voice and unlock the natural ways I'm supposed to be speaking, while releasing tension and blockages accumulated to many years of self-criticism and judgement. While at a yoga class, yesterday morning, I drew a tarot card with the word "Strategy" on it and so I started thinking how I could do things more strategically in every area of my life. One of these areas is my life purpose which is making videos on YouTube, however, I think I should strategically work my way up to developing the skills to create those videos, instead of just jumping right in and recording them right away. Even though I could do this, a smarter, more strategic way would be to gradually "level up" the skills of voice, story telling, persuasion, and verbal expression (expressing ideas creatively and with confidence) to have good impact on listeners. Also, this will give me more time to work on other areas and get more ideas for video content, so I think I shouldn't rush this and continue expanding my knowledge and mastering the skills, sharpening all those weapons for the big battle ahead!

What if we designed a more efficient system of thinking which would lead to less thinking / consciousness faster? I mean, what you call consciousness work / meditation is already a part of a more efficient system, so is unplugging from toxic information sources. I don't think I ever said "more thinking", what I'm proposing is redesign of a very ineffective system.

@Leo Gura The mind is the problem for what? Enlightenment? Learning? Understanding, Memory, Comprehension? Language? Isn't our mind the reason we have been able to evolve past apes? Isn't contemplation the most important tool for sages? Isn't mindfulness/consciousness one of the practices which affects your thinking system, making you learn, understand better and more accurately perceive reality? If I stop thinking, will I not become a vegetable? I'm already seeing much improvement in my life thanks to what I've described above, my memory and learning has improved, my understanding of reality is broadening, my negative thoughts and feelings are starting to fade away, I'm gaining more clarity and peace of mind everyday, so where exactly is this problem? I understand it's useful to let the thinking go during a meditation and probably has to be turned off completely if we are ever to reach enlightenment, but we still need to live in this 3D world, how is making your mind more efficient going to be a problem? I thought this is what Actualized.org is all about, didn't you use your mind, learning, understanding, thinking to get to where you are now and create this community? No worries about raining on parade, I accept I may be wrong, but there are too many questions at this point. Hope you will clarify, thanks brother!

That's a good point, but I think the monkey mind and neurotic behavior can only be there if we're not mindful and let ourselves run on automatic pilot. Becoming mindful and aware will give us a choice weather we want to be completely present in the moment or consciously choose to contemplate on the surrounding environment. We will be thinking about the environment and get reminded of things from it anyway, so might as well take advantage of it to benefit our purpose. I think consciously creating thoughts and associations that will help us achieve our goals, which will then eventually move in the subconscious is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful way to change ourselves. Another example: I go outside the sun is shining, it's really hot, my sub-conscious before conscious thought choices and associations could go something like this: "It's so fucking hot, why does it have to always be so hot, I wish this place had more seasons, like a real winter" (this is what my actual thought process was like before I started thinking about this). Now that I'm becoming more selective of symbol associations, it's starting to look something like this: "The sun is a symbol of energy, vitality, power, happiness, joy, what I'm feeling on my skin is nature's love and warmth, it's activating the power within me giving me confidence, vitality and energy, all life on Earth comes from the Sun, I'm so grateful the sun is shining today! See how powerful this is? I do understand I'm tinkering with the most complex systems of all here and we have to be extra careful not to create more problems and mess, which is why it's important to look at the whole thing from the Systems perspective so we can be mindful of all the traps, opportunities, leverage points, feedback loops, inflows and how everything is interconnected with other systems - Memory System, Emotional System, Learning System etc.

I'm in a similar place with my parents. My parents are alcoholics and always blaming each other, fighting, creating drama. It got to a point where I just didn't see any value in seeing them anymore so I completely stopped talking and seeing them about three weeks ago. There are several insights I got from meditating on and contemplating my situation 1) By seeing and talking to my parents, I'm not really helping them, I'm only creating misery for myself by allowing myself to be affected by their negativity 2) In between the "breaks" where I stop talking to them, I start guilt tripping myself for not helping them 3) I realized I was blaming my parents for creating misery, negativity and limited beliefs for me, note how it's not my parents that are creating this misery for me, but myself (I am my worst enemy) 4) I will not blame my parents anymore but develop unconditional love and compassion for them 5) I can't guilt trip myself for not seeing them (because I wasn't helping them) and by working on myself and healing myself, that is the best way to help my family and everyone else in the world (we are all literally one).

Opened up the fridge yesterday and realized I didn't have any ingredients to make a decent meal. Improving my nutrition by mastering more healthy, delicious recipes is something that I've been putting off for a few weeks now, so I decided to start taking care of it yesterday. I have a book called "Real Fit" which has quick, delicious and simple recipes, which is exactly what I need, so I took it with me to Sprouts and bought some new ingredients that I don't usually buy. This is how I decided to approach this, I'm slowly going to incorporate new ingredients and try as many recipes as I can from the book, and add my own ideas to them to match my very active lifestyle. I made a Kale salad which was had it's ideas from guacamole and it turned out to be the most delicious salad I've ever had! I also added some blue corn organic chips to it and himalayan salt which wasn't part of the recipe. I was really surprised that a kale salad could taste so delicious and be so satisfying if cooked right, so I'm thinking what other recipes from the book I've underestimated just because they don't look as good. I also seem to be put off by recipes that call for new ways of cooking that I've never done before like baking, and I'm now wanting to try those also. Surprisingly the whole process of trying out new dishes from the book and even cooking them was actually enjoyable and added a sprinkle of variety to the day, so it's a win win for me. I think what's making this kind of activity fun and enjoyable is my daily meditation practice and unplugging from the toxic information sources and giving up addictions. I feel a lot calmer and peaceful and able to enjoy simple activities like writing and cooking which would frustrate me in the past and I would try to rush through them just to get it done. I think self development work is starting to pay off on many different levels and this is giving me even more motivation to continue on this journey.

San Diego, California

@Jordan wang I was just thinking how lucky I was to get out of the "competitive sport" paradigm myself, only around 6 months ago. I now see it as a ego bolstering activity and a huge waste of time. Yes there is of course the fun aspect of mastering the sport and enjoying the process, in my case it was table tennis, but the competitive ego far outweighed the fun and exercise part. There is a rated table tennis tournament here in San Diego every Thursday. Looking back on it now, I have never seen so much ego getting together in the same place, myself being part of it. There is so much egoic pressure to win and show off your skills that it often makes people perform at a much lower level than they are really capable of it. Even just for fun, wasn't ever just for fun, I think it's ego's way of denying it's competing, so that's even worse. I remember feeling really negative, if I only just lost one game in the tournament, because I was always supposed to beat everyone, because my skills were much better than what I played every Thursday night. It would also start a downward spiral, leading to as far as "my life sucks, and I'm a loser, because I can't get good at anything". Competitive sport can really suck you into a very rigid paradigm, because you so strongly identify and measure your level of success based on your performance and feedback from other competitors, which can easily percolate into personal life, you will never feel satisfied because there will always be another level to reach and someone who is better than you. What I presented here is from my own experience of participating in a competitive sport and what kind of ego traps I experienced. I believe it can be a fun, enjoyable activity, though I think it's very difficult to approach it in this way if you're competing. PS: It was very difficult to drop this activity for me because I was so identified with, my whole life revolved around it and it became part of me, it was like breaking up from a relationship, but turned out to be one of the best decisions I made in my life.

Felt a lot of opening in the chest and warm feeling in the heart during acupuncture at Natalie's yesterday, the needles were placed on my head, center of chest and both hands, in the center of the palms area, creating a triangle which has powerful meaning in the sacred geometry and is symbol that represents masculine, fire, light and the holy Trinity. She guided me to first, expanding the heart beyond the body and cultivating love for myself and then going back to the past, sending this love to all the previous ages, all the way down to when I was still inside of my mother's womb, together with my brother. As I was going back to the past, looking where I was and how far I've come, I realized that I was still holding resentment, judgement and regrets for a lot of my past behavior, a lot of it was also guilt and shame. I could feel these psychological wounds being healed as I sent all these past versions of myself love, it especially got emotional when I got to around age 5, when I was that innocent, cute little boy, playing with toys and being so curious about life. Tears started rolling down as I sent love for the toddler self, here I was, before I learned anything about life, just completely being, how could I ever criticize myself and being so harsh towards oneself? When did I learn to be so cruel to that divine being of love? I don't think I've ever looked back on my life in this way, whenever I've thought about my past, it would occur randomly, automatically, unconsciously, and I would begin to judge and criticize self for all the mistakes I've done in the past which would of course re-enforce those memories and make my self criticism stronger. Sending unconditional love, going back all the ages has really started to change the way I look at myself, I don't see mistakes anymore, but rather countless experiences and lessons, and I'm starting to see other people as guides and teachers along the path. Had I not gone through a lot of the challenges and obstacles along the way, I may not have arrived to a place where I am now, which is the happiest I've ever been in my entire life. I'm so grateful for my life today and can only be thankful for the fate leading me to where I am today, with all of the sign posts and guides along the way. I now see social anxiety, depression and any other illness as body's signals of telling me that I'm off the right path, rather than seeing it as misfortune and illness. It's my body's way of telling me that I still need more healing and that I should make it a priority to seek out ways of healing any psychological wounds still remaining. This is what has lead me to Natalie, and Ashley, the Ayahuasca shaman with whom I'll be going to Peru for 10 days ceremony by the end of October. She told me, I will come back a different person, the experience changes you, for the good. Is it a coincidence that I got that gift for myself right on my birthday? I see it as a gift from the Divine, I feel like a lot of things that I have been doing in regards to healing myself was like a preparation for Peru's "big one".

I think we should start bringing together all systems thinkers (stage yellow) and start brainstorming how we can help out Leo on his noble goal to awaken humanity to the next level of consciousness. We are in the middle of the Great World War of Information where the current system of survival and dominance paradigm is keeping itself alive by creating all sorts of mechanisms for it's own survival and benefit, but creating much suffering for humans, planet and other beings in the process, it's up to us as conscious individuals to redesign this malignant system. The days of individual survival are over, it's time to survive as a whole human race, this is where the stage turquoise of human psyche development is pointing to and we need to design new systems and sub systems to re-awaken as many individuals as possible, help them switch from the paradigm of survival, so they see the light of non-egoic consciousness and start working with us. Leo is doing the most important work, he has been my teacher and guide and the reason why I'm on this journey. How can we get more like-minded people together and help with this most noble goal of helping humanity awaken. We need to combine our creativity, talents, all sorts of art forms, technical, marketing, story telling and other unique skills to create the most powerful messages possible. For this to happen we need to think outside the rational boundaries of current system, we need to design a way to work together so that our efforts work in synergy and our messages reach as many people as possible. I will be starting my own channel called ONE, (we are one) where I'll be talking about these ideas in a similar style as Leo. We need an army of Leo's! YouTube is a great platform for dispersing this information, but it won't be easy working on our own, we need each other's help. I envision this "CIA style" command center where systems thinkers will come together some day to work towards this noble goal of helping the world awaken. We will have the latest gadgets and tech, videographers, artists, actors, marketers, charismatic leaders, technicians, programmers, engineers, architects etc...And we will all work on designing new systems for delivering the most powerful messages, infiltrating entertainment industry and other sources of global information. Selecting the right 'targets' of influence like celebrities and actors to somehow 'show them the light' and switch them over to our cause (not in a forceful way of course, but by designing a system and nudging them towards discovering higher levels of consciousness and seeing the light). It will be like the school of magic where we will be experimenting with psychedelics, psychic abilities, alternative healing, gathering insights and intelligence, growing our consciousness and spreading this new enlightened information everywhere. We will also be working on 'tangible' system structures like - 'zeitgeist (Peter Joseph) style projects like resource based economy', regenerative farming, the Tesla of eco-villages, music festival style gatherings for sharing love and knowledge. Is there anybody out there who wants to join this cause? I think this forum is a great way for starting to connect with other systems thinkers.

@Sean Johnson More vagueness, "I must", "I have to", "I have to". If there is no way to communicate it to me, then why are you even attempting to communicate this to me? When you throw words around like "must" and "have to", you don't inspire much credibility and reeking of dogma. Anyway, we're off topic now.

@Sean Johnson That's very vague, could you elaborate? What type of communication are you referring to and what is "true" communication? You have learned to write your words from books and other people, is what you're communicating to me false? What do you mean surrender? Do I just surrender myself to my laziness and gain all the wisdom in the world?

@RichardY Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza

@Kimasxi If people knew the value and true meaning of the word "solitude", everyone would be cultivating it instead of chasing friendships, relationships, love and support from other people. Coming from a place of egoic neediness, all these pursuits become addictions and cause great suffering. Imagine getting to a place where you're truly feeling content on your own, not needing anybody to make you feel better or support you, I know this may sound impossible now and you may have thoughts like: "so should I just accept my misery and loneliness?", that's where the difference between loneliness and solitude comes in which are the opposites of each other. And when you have truly cultivated solitude, making authentic friendships will come naturally, and this time they will be true friendships, not surface level fake friends feeding their neediness off each other.

@Sean Johnson Yes! Seeing religions as metaphors from Joseph Campbell's perspective, I love the "Second Coming": "The armies of heaven, dressed in fine linen, white and pure, follow Him on white horses. And from His mouth proceeds a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations." The sharp sword being the most powerful weapon that we have as humans - language. Armies of heaven and Him are the enlightened people - us who will communicate messages to enlighten others. Of course language does have it's limits, it's very inefficient when it comes to learning and especially memorizing things. We think in pictures which is why I'm currently studying symbols, metaphors and concepts from a books called Unlimited Memory and Systems Thinking. I think re-building the system for our own learning, understanding and thinking is the most important work one can do on this journey when starting out. We haven't really been taught to learn how to learn and think efficiently, and with so much to learn and understand about reality and ourselves, building that foundation for optimized learning is going to help us tremendously. I'll describe what I've been working on in more detail in another post, this is fascinating stuff.

But @Leo Gura What if I get together with someone to talk about self development and we both come out of the meeting with insights that we haven't been able to come to on our own? This is a very small example of how we can work together, are you saying we shouldn't be interacting with other like-minded people to get a better understanding of reality and how to navigate it, why should we be pursuing consciousness on our own? I do understand, the real inner-work is done on our own by meditating and gaining the understanding of reality, nobody will do this for us, but connecting with others to gain insights, seeing people as teachers and experiences as lessons would greatly amplify our growth and test if we are really embodying all the good things that we're trying to cultivate within ourselves. I guess my original post was misleading. I think a misunderstanding comes from not making a distinction between "let's get together and spread the messages of consciousness" vs "let's share information with each other and elevate our own consciousness" so that we can then make better decisions on whichever way can help the world. Did I get that right? @Truth Thanks brother, I think I understand now. I agree that we need to work on ourselves first, so that we can then make better decisions on how we can help the world and that jumping into this by trying to organize people from a place of ego is going to lead to another disaster.

Went to ELG meeting at Linda's house yesterday, it was around here in La Mesa where I live and I was invited there by another woman I met at Enlightened Living meetup named Sarah. I had judgmental thoughts and made a lot of assumptions of what the meeting was going to look like. I knew, most likely, that all people there would be much older than I am, and I was watching my mind as it created thoughts like: "why are you going there to hang out with these old people? you're going there to do chanting and energy work? those are just some old desperate, lonely people who have nothing better to do but imagine things and believe in anything just to fill their time with something....why am I going there to waste time on this non-sense with these people? people my age should be hanging out with other beautiful people my age, talking about some real self development things, not some fairy tale energies." I had to push through all these barriers of criticism while making my way over there and I could see how I would easily change my mind about going there in the past, had I not been as mindful and aware as I am now. As I contemplate this further, I realize a lot of these thoughts come from my family, social and cultural conditioning and personal arrogance, ignorance and judgement of other people. When I got there, my assumptions about all people being much older than I am, turned out to be correct. It took me a while to warm up to the meeting, after some chants and meditations, I realized how much of an asshole I was prejudging all those people based on age and the activity. I can see how my own aging will cause a lot of suffering in the future if I continue with this type of thinking of putting myself on the pedestal, above others, just because I'm younger. I tried putting myself in those people's shoes and imagining myself being 60 years old, and how I would have liked to be treated by younger people. Being mindful and aware of these negative thoughts allowed me to transcend them and move into a place of cultivating unconditional love for all the people in the group. The actual theme of the meeting turned out to be right in line with what I'm doing with my own personal development, which was about Chakra clearing, chanting to re-connect with the divine self, concluding with sharing personal stories about our lives and supporting each other. All the women there turned out to be very kind, loving and supportive and I further felt embarrassed for my pre-judgements of these lovely women who gave me great insights and support when I shared that I'm going through a difficult time with my family. This is showing how transformative and powerful meditation and awareness really is, the experience of reality has completely shifted from "they are just a bunch of old people who don't have anything better to do, why should I waste time with them?" - which would lead to frustration, anger and a lot of discomfort sitting through the meeting to - "these are lovely human beings, sharing their life stories, on noble spiritual quest to reconnect with their true selfs, we are all here to practice self development and support each other." This allowed me to experience the group and getting into states of consciousness during meditations that we did together like I've never been able to before. By the end, I felt love and compassion for all the women, I felt connection with all of them, as if they had all become my friends. Huge lessons and insights from this experience, I think I'm starting to see real inner growth.

I'm going to Peru for 10 days for a deep Ayahuasca ceremony on October 22 - November 1st. Met Ashley yesterday and it turned out to be the best birthday gift I could've gotten. She beautifully summarized exactly what I was looking for in my life - a loving, supportive community of intelligent friends, a sense of worthiness, a connection with other human beings, a connection with life and the planet and most importantly deep healing of all the psychosomatic wounds I have been accumulating in my life, living with severe social anxiety and depression. She told me I'm carrying tons of shit, so heavy, that she wasn't able to lift it with her usual technique of uplifting people while the drumming and chanting shamanic ritual. There is a point during these rituals - EFT Energy meetup chanting, meditation mountain at LIB, Erica Gagnon talking at the sacred fire at LIB, Natalie's acupuncture, and yesterday's Ashley's shamanic rituals with drums, smoke and chanting -- which all get me to a point where my heart starts opening up and I feel this warm loving energy permeating my chest, throat, head and other parts of the body. It's as if I'm being reminded of how loving and beautiful life really is, a sense of a mother's love for her child, true happiness and joy, that all of that is within me, covered by the layers of social conditioning and self criticism which created all these blocks in the energy body. I woke up this morning, barely feeling the usual heaviness and pain in the chest, so the shamanic ritual yesterday really changed something in me. I will be visiting Ashley more starting mid August so we can start preparing my body for the Peru ceremony. She told me she will be identifying which ally plants I will be working with and what I should eliminate or include in my diet. The decision of me going to Peru happened yesterday, which was my birthday, I was actually contemplating my own death most of the day (fun thing to do on your birthday), and was thinking what I would do differently, had I died on that day. Well, the only thing I would do differently is to visit my family and tell them I love them, I'm not seeing them at this time, because I need to go through this healing journey alone and I'm just not ready to deal with their negativity at this time. But for the most part, I thought I wouldn't do anything differently and would continue on this journey of healing, self discovery and life purpose. I ended up at Ashley's place around 6:30pm which was supposed to be a meetup group, though nobody else showed up, so she gave me a preview of her work which turned out to be a lot more powerful than I expected. She was very knowledgeable in her practice, she has been doing healing rituals and working with Ayahuasca for five years through drumming, chanting, smoke and communicating with the spirits. There was a lot of hesitation and lack of trust on my part in the beginning, it took me a while to warm up to her and begin trusting her. I don't trust people easily, especially when it comes to these types of experiences and rituals. However, her loving energy, knowledge, kindness, understanding, warmth and the skills she demonstrated during the ritual itself, told me she is legit and that I should follow her advice on continuing the healing process and going to Peru for a full ceremony where people really know what they're doing.