Scholar

But not everyone taking 5-MeO-DMT makes the same claims, so who am I to trust, and why am I to trust myself?

Ironically the CIA invented the term "Conspiracy Theory" in the 1960s to discredit controversial criticism of the goverment, which itself of course would be labelled as a conspiracy theory. The fact that something like the Kennedy Assassination is put in the same category as people claiming they have been abducted by aliens is quite an effective way to have the public view any investigation in possibly real conspiracies as completely uncredible. Whether or not there was a conspiracy is not even that important, either way it was an ingenious way to control public opinion. No high profile journalist will risk his career to go and actually investigate something that would be labelled a conspiracy theory, and that is a big reason why you get a lot of these "far out" conspiracies, which even if they contain certain truths, are entirely untrustworthy because of the hyberboles and the lack of investigative competence of the people who come up with conspiracy theories. I don't get too deep into this kind of stuff, but from the little research I have done, it's quite ridicilious how the goverment can just stage suicides and deaths in completely ridicilous manners without any real, credible jouranlists even mentioning that it happened or by god, that it might even seem suspicious. Whether or not the goverment actually does that is not even the point, the point is that they easily could do it with no consequence whatsoever, because even if something is ridicilously suspicious, no journalist will risk their job for it, partly because they themselves dismiss everything as conspiracy theories. Other than that, I think there are multiple reasons for why conspiracies are so popular, for example: - emergence of the internet and the resulting uncertainity of credible information - cultural dispersion - increase of atheism - actual conspiracies like Operation Northwoods - lack of mystery in modern culture - increase of social isolation - lack of critical thinking in the population

I agree. I think we are simply too greedy. We want to know everything before we have even understood the simplest things, and we want to achieve everything before we have achieved the simplest things. We have to keep in mind that most of Leo's videos, if applied correctly, will transform your life completely. One video, one piece of advice, could probably have you surpass 90% of the human population. When I discovered Leo I watched tons of videos of his. It did benefit my life to a certain degree, but I realized that I haven't mastered a single one of Leo's advice, not even remotely. Today I am kind of the opposite, I can't keep up with Leo's videos. Every week he brings a new valuable piece of advice, and to be honest, it's doing more harm than good to me. I'm just not ready for it, I have massive amounts of actions I have to take based on previous videos. Applying the advice of one video equals to 1000s of hours of work. It's just impossible to take action on all of his videos, and what I discovered in myself is that it creates expectations that cannot be met. It's like trying to build a space-rocket before having invented the wheel. The fundamentals need to sit, and that will already take tremendous amounts of work. Ironically though it is really the fundamentals that will grant the most benefits. The seemingly most simple stuff is what will give the most growth, and I think especially people who have been long on a path realize that. It all comes down to mastery. You have to apply mastery to Leo's videos, and once you get a picture of the effort it takes for staying on the path of mastery, you will be much more humble about what you can achieve in life. We are like the impatient martial artist who wants to learn the most fancy and difficult techniques before he has appreciated the challenge of learning to throw a simple punch. The one who will appreciate the challenge of the most simple, ironically will achieve the most complex. It is the perfection of the simple that makes the complex possible. Imagine if atoms were inaccurate in their behaviour, if their most fundamental attributes didn't sit. There wouldn't be any life in the universe, no complex construction would have the chance to emerge and be stable. The atoms are perfection, the true mastery of simplicity. And look what they can achieve, look at the universe that has emerged from the mastery of simple rules. The same applies to life. You can either try to apply a thousand rules half-assedly, or you can choose to apply a select few and embed them in your being. Instead of having 20 small habits a day, focus it to one that you do properly. Instead of 20 minutes of meditation, 5 minutes affirmation, 10 minutes visualization etc, do 2 hours of meditation and nothing else. I mean, we make it so complicated, but if you applied true mindfulness to your life, you'd have already won the game. You'd be set. But of course, to get there you'll need to sacrifice and put in really hard work. Instead you can jump from one piece of advice to the other, giving you the illusion of progress while you never have to face the challenge of masterying anything.

This is Sam Harris' claim, he is convinced that intelligence is a product of complex information processing. Isn't it obvious though that this cannot be the case if one inspects his own expirience? My conscious expirience of the color red has influence on my behaviour, proven to myself simply by the fact that I can become aware of expiriencing the color red. If intelligence or behaviour was merely grounded in physical information processing, the expirience of red itself couldn't possibly create a reaction in the mind. Infact, there wouldn't even be a place for the expirience to take place whatsoever. Isn't it far more likely that intelligence emerges from consciousness, or atleast that the information processing and consciousness are interacting with each other, as it seems? I know from a non-dual perspective it's not seperate, but simply from a conceptual perspective the idea that complex information procressing gives rise to conscioussness, which then has not influence on the information processing whatsoever, makes no sense to me at all. I can clearly become aware of consciousness having direct influence on my information processing. It seems that however neurons work, they are not governed by mere, classical physical rules. It's also unreasonable to me to assume that from a certain complexity of information processing suddenly consciousness would arise. I mean, what hilarious kind of rule would that be? Did the universe just look at how atoms move and decide that if they are arranged in a specific order, interacting with each other in a specific way, consciousness would just pop out? And where does consciousness even pop up, what is it made of? These questions are completely ignored, and assumption upon assumption is made, not even rational whatsoever, by the leading scientists on this field. It's like they didn't even get the fundamentals of intelligence and consciousness down. Does anyone understand their perspective of argumentation?

I think it's fascinating to see that Graham is falling into many ego traps himself, which really emphasizes for me how important the practical investigation of the own mind really is. He is researching ancient culture, he is completely convinced of them having had a deeper message that was essential for them, yet he does not actually value the message whatsoever, atleast that's what it seems like. He is not on a path of self-improvement, self-actualization, meditation or enlightenment, but his entire work is based upon the idea that these are basicly the most essential things to achieve for mankind. He seems just as dysfunctional as Micheal Shermer, just that he happens to have a view that requires greater open mindedness. He is only really open minded when it serves his own theory. Randall to me is a much more fascinating character, and also much more open minded as it seems. He seems to have preserved more of his true curiosity, which really is about discovery more than agenda. It's interesting though that it's very natural for the human mind to fill in gaps with fantasy, and more importantly to recognize how much joy one can recieve from that. If we crack our old beliefs, there are so many possible different beliefs we can replace it with. And we can pick them, we can make them up, we can let our fantasy go freely. In a world prior to science this very ability must have been used all the time, and it probably was amazing. It gave the world a sense of mystery, and more importantly it gave the child the chance to discover and dive into that mystery. Today science seems to have blocked this "play", because there isn't much to discover anymore. It seems like everything significant has been discovered. So we as humans seem to really be depraved of that. Whereas in our natural habitat we evolved to use our fantasy to make connections and sense out of the word, today there is no balance between that process and the simple cold facts of the world. In a sense there is a lack of wonder, curiosity was smothered. It's fascinating to observe this feeling coming back though, and how much the mind is craving it. Imagining that we do not know what was before the cataclysm that might have taken place, and then being able to wonder what exactly it was that was going on. It's curiosity, it drives fantasy, and it is the foundation of the human scientific journey. From that invention and exploration emerged. A problem occurs when the mind gets attached to what it has constructed, when the magical world becomes a new set belief that needs to be procted. This is when curiosity dies, when exploration and invention disappear. We have to be careful about not supressing our imagination, to let it roam freely, but to not get attached to what we imagine. I think it will be a great source of inspiration and motivation. Yes, reality usually is not as grand and fantastical as we make it up in our mind, but the grand and fantastical fantasy is what is going to motviate us to discover what reality really is.

There are no "evil" people, and it's probably not a conspiracy. It's a natural evolution of society. In the end our entire civilization we live in is founded on the idea that the map is the territory, that there is objective truth. People who do not agree with that objective truth are disvalued, and because people who take psychedelics do not agree with that objective truth, you will have a reaction against that medium. There is probably no one around who is thinking "Oh we need to ban psychedelics because it wakes people up and we have to keep them asleep!", it's more like from their perspective, people who do not agree with objective truth are just crazy, and because psychedelics seem to form these kinds of people, the usage of these substances are valued as crazy aswell. It's really all about disagreement and agreement. The question whether or not it's a conscious and deliberate conspiracy like for example the catholic church has done in the past with global populations is questionable. It's probably simply mass ignorance, and maybe an unconscious mechanism of control. For a stable society to develope certain mechanism need to evolve to keep the society stable. Much like the ego in the human mind is not a conscious conspirator, and simply a mechanism that evolved to ensure survival of the organism, it is much the same in the organization of society and civilization.

So I've been trying to get my productivity consistent in the past few months. A few weeks ago I decided to take it slow and just start from studying 1 hour every day, and increase it for an hour every week until I am at 8 hours. So, everything went perfectly well up to week 4, where I already started seeing signs of it getting more and more difficult. I decided to wait another week before I'd go to 5 hours of studying, and I also decided to have one day off each week. On week 6, when I increased to 5 hours of studying, it seems like I started to stumble a little more. One day I got only 2 hours, the other only 1, and then another only 3. So I was 4 hours short on how much I'd have to do for the week. I decided to once again wait a week before raising the study time, so the 7th week I still did 5 hours a day. But that week I kind of failed miserably. These were my hours of studying: Mo 2, Tu 3, We 5, Th 2, Fr 5, Sa 4 and So 0, which is today. I have the feeling like I am burning out, but it might also be my mind trying to stay in homeostasis, like mentioned in the book "Mastery". How should I go about this? Just brute force myself through this or better take it slow and maybe go back to 4 hours a day next week? I'm not sure, because I really don't want to burn out completely.

When I say studying it also includes exercising it. I'd count learning anatomy and just drawing anatomy over and over again to memorize it as both studying. It's not just intellectual knowledge, but also practical skill. It doesn't seem like 40 hours is a lot compared to what the successful people in the industry put into their craft. Some say they used to "study" 16 hours a day, every day of the week, for years. And didn't you spend insane amount of hours building your business, atleast in the beginning? How can one stay competitive if there are people who put in more than 40 hours per week into whatever they are doing? I'm not yet studying 8 hours per day, but that was the goal I was shooting for. I'm a really low energy person, most of the time, and I'd hope to increase the energy simply by getting myself more used to working more and more. Is that a silly strategy?

I'm studying drawing at the moment, and my tasks do get very monotonous. Whenever I introduce a new element or learn about a new thing I do tend to get in a flow state where I can just practise relentlessly. But the problem with mastery are of course the flatlines. I need to do the same thing thousands of times before it really becomes effortless, and often times introducing a new element is not really practical before I haven't learned the more fundmanetal thing first. It's the same with my meditation habit aswell. I usually am really good at meditating when I try a new kind of meditation, focusing on different aspects. As soon as I do the same thing every day my mind just goes on autopilot and it becomes boring. But the problem is that to get really good at it, I need to stick to one thing and do it over and over. For now, I'll go back to 4 hours a day.

You are asking him for another map. To see the territory you need to stop looking at the map.

If I hate one thing about the entire spiritual culture, it is that people always look to give the deepest answere they can instead of actually being helpful. Yes, "A person cannot be enlightened!", but you know exactly what I mean!

Does anyone have an estimate on the number of enlightened people living today? And obviously there are degrees of enlightenment, so I guess there are far less Buddha-level enlightened people than there are regular level enlightened people.

Life is a game that most of us take way too seriously.

I've been thinking about this notion for quite a while. Life is a play of forces, each going into a different direction. This is true for collectives just as much as for individuals themselves. For example, there are parts of me that want to be lazy, and then there are parts of me that want to accomplish goals. It is a war between these two parts, and for one part persist, the other must suffer. If I want to get healthy and excersise, my lazy part will resist and suffer until it is exstinguished. In many cases the lazy part is so overwhelmingly strong that it requires an explosion of force to just give the health oriented mind a chance to act. How many people keep attempting to exercise but fail over and over again. A lot of people need a real wake up call. But even if they manage to do it the "slow and steady" route, they still will suffer. Parts of them will hate it, and these parts might even be killed in the process. This goes the same for the ego. The rational mind attacks the ego with such force, with for example the Zen Buddhist method of getting enlightened, that the ego is literally tortured and mutilated until it gives up, until it dies. It's a war between two forces. The same goes for collectives. Revolutions are the Zen Buddhist method of trying to change and kill parts of a collective radically, which requires suffering on the parts that are aimed to be eradicated. This is what Hitler tried to do, obviously, but the resistence was simply too strong, so the "revolution" simply failed. Now, climate activists try to do the slow method, where as Islamic Terrorists try to use the radical method. Both want to achieve change, but both face incredible resistence. From the perspective we could see us, the western world, being the ego, and the terrorists rational parts that want to stop a behaviour of the ego, or simply try to eradicate it completely. Now, this desire stems, of course, from suffering, just as the rational mind suffers from the egoic actions. We destabilized and terrorized the middle east in gruesome form, so now there is resistence that is trying to brute force and change this behaviour. Quite interesting just how similar this works to the individual mind. If our ration parts recognize that we are taking a path that will lead us to more suffering, it will resist the rest of the mind and try to take over. So, the two methods for change seem to be either resistance or harmony based. Creating so much resistence that one part simply crumble to dust, or using harmony to slowly pull the other part into the desired direction. Of course the harmonic method probably wields the more effective results. It seems as the the resistance based approach usually requires many attempts, but at the same time it works faster than the harmonic approach. But the suffering is greater too. If we take this an apply it to problems we face today, we will see that a resistence based approach will cost human lifes. This is what terrorists do, and without the terrorists, it's farely certain to assume that we would not have any public awareness over what is going on in the middle east. The terrorists are achieving their goal, even though it is no their ideologic goal, it is the systemic result of what created them. They were created due to us fiddling around with the middle east, and the public slowly starts to realize that maybe it's not the best idea to fiddle around with the middle east. Maybe we should not be bombing innocent people if we want peace in the west. This idea might not even be around if it wasn't for people commiting horrible acts of terrorism to raise awareness. They are not doing it to raise awareness, but their suffering is so great that they act in ways that create awareness. It's much like a heart attack for an obese person. The heart attack did not happen to simply wake up the person, it happened because the person did not care for their health. The terrorist do not exist so they can raise awareness, they exist because we completely and utterly destroyed the middle east. But still, just as the heart attack, they might cause the person to start thinking about their actions. Now, if the person does not change their actions, it will lead to more and more heart attacks, just as for us it will lead to more and more terrorist attacks. At some point either the obese person dies, or the heart attacks frighten him so much that he changes behaviour. Of course it's not as simple as that with the terrorists and us, but it basicly works the same way. Extreme suffering caused extreme resistance, and extreme resistance will cause extreme behaviour change. This is what we need for climate, because climate is an existential threat. The problem is that climate is not really like a heart attack, climate is more like a slow developing cancer. There is no wake up call until it is way too late. With cancer it usually takes the rational mind to change behaviour. And what climate activists do is basicly like telling a person who smokes that they "might" get cancer if they keep smoking. Even if you tell them that they will get cancer, they will not care. The problem here is that there is noone willing to blow themselves up for a truly significant cause like climate change. People who care for climate are empathetic and will not kill to save lifes. I belong to that category, but I can still recognize that his might cause the end of civilization. This unwillingness for the rational mind to resort to extreme measures for the "greater good", especially because this has been demonized by our culture, might in the end be what really kills us. Even if we resort to extreme measures, there is no certainity that it will help, simply because the resistance will be so great. It would take a great amount of force to actually radically change the behaviour of the collective organism that we call mankind. A heart attack is probably not enough, and even if, causing something proportionate to a heart attack would probably be like having a hurricane eradice new york city completely, and kill millions of human beings in the process. That might wake us up, but that will not happen. It's a slowly developing cancer, and it will be a slow and miserably death. Just like with individuals, suffering is usually what motivates them and brings them on the path to enlightenment. There is not enough suffering in the western world to get us on a path that is not self destructive. Realistically seen, isn't mankind just like a smoking obese person, who we have to hope for somehow gets onto the path of enlightenment? What are the chances of that happening? That smoking, obese person has a higher chance winning the lottery. Maybe it's better to accept the failure of mankind? Maybe it is simply the inevitable fate of any intelligent species? Maybe that's just how nature works...

Never forget: whenever you take the fast, easy path, you will miss the lessons you would have learned from walking the long, rocky path. Even worse, you might never be able to go back, and the lessons will be inaccessable to you for the rest of your life, unless you get your brain back to the bad state it has been before you "cheated" your way through. And of course, you are encouraging a non-mastery mentality: Results over path. In the end it depends on what you want. If you actually want to self-actualize, I think you should first do a few years of pure meditation, and maybe later add some fancy stuff that will increase results. But if you just want to get results fast, well then go for it.

First, what is Naive Realism? Naive Realism describes the fundamental way human beings comprehend reality, meaning our way of projecting properties of our awareness onto reality itself. For example: Looking at an object and believing that the objects color is actually a fundamental attribute of that object. So from a naive realist perspective, the object would be red, blue or whatever color it seems to be. So, we take attributes of our consciousness and project them onto our idea of what reality is. Again and again we have dismissed more and more naive realist notions. We know for example that objects do not smell, that they do not taste, that they aren't cold or hot. We also know that for example sound does not exist. All of these things are simply ways of our brain to measure accurately and have the ability to then use the attained information for the purpose of survival. An important notion in this is the following: Try to describe the color red in words to someone who has never expirienced red. Quite quickly you will realize that it is impossible. No word can describe a color, a word can simply be a symbol for a color. So, we only know which colors we are referring to because we all agreed on calling the same colors the same words. This is very important because it goes for every aspect of our awareness. You cannot describe a smell, a feeling, a taste, you cannot describe anything whatsoever. This is how far the paradigm of science has gotten, but there is one aspect that they seem to completely overlook, and for that there is a very good reason. We have taken everything in our consciousness and disproven that it actually is part of the "outside" reality. Colors do not exist outside of the mind, feelings do not exist outside of the mind, taste and smell does not exist outside of the mind. There are things though that we truly believe exists outside of our mind, and that is form, motion, time and location. We truly believe that there are atoms that move through space and time. We believe that objects exist, that they are made of matter, of "form". This is a notion scientists seem to be unable of letting go of, and our entire scientific paradigm is based around that. Feelings, colors and any other awareness expirience are non-existent to us, because we have proven that they are not actually what the "outside" reality is made of. Clearly, as we see, the outside reality is made of matter, of form that moves, and time that directs all motion. This is our view and the reason to hold this view is very simple. As we have done for thousands of years, yet again we are as naive as we have been from the beginning. We project attributes of our mind onto what reality really is supposed to be. We project awareness of "location", "motion" and "time" onto our idea of reality. What else would we project onto it, it's literally the last "properties" we have left. If we would admit that this is a projection, we would admit that our minds are completely incapable of comprehending reality. We would admit that we have absolutely nothing to describe reality with. Why? Because the only things we have left to describe reality with is motion, form and time. Everything you will find in physics is describing these attributes. No matter what words they use, whether it is energy, particles or fields, on all of these words we project our mind attributes of motion, form and time. With quantum physics we have pretty much disproven the last naive realisim notion that way left. Matter, form, time and space do not exist outside of our minds, and what reality really is made of is inaccessable to us, for eternity. Yes, we cling to our naive realist notions, we cannot let go of them. Infact, we make up new naive realist paradigms. Theories of our reality being a simulation, of our reality being holographic. It's getting even worse than it was before. We are literally taking a cultural aspect and projecting it onto reality. Without computers this notion would not exist. It's far naiver than anything we came up with before. It seems like human beings have a problem. We cannot admit that our device, our brain, is not capable of creating truth. We cannot admit that any of our projections onto reality cannot be what reality really is. If we did, we'd admit just how clueless we are, and we'd admit that our brain cannot do much more than predict. The last man standing, prediction, is what we hope to bring us the truth. We have created prediction machines, computers. We have created prediction systems like mathematics. And we claw ourselves to that notion, that prediction is what reality is. This is what they starting to claim. We cannot admit to the true mystery that reality is and will forever remain. In the end all we have of reality is our consciousness. It is the only thing we will ever have of reality. We are projecting our consciousness onto reality and we always did. It's really the only thing we CAN do. Believing in reality itself is a notion of mind. Belief itself is a notion of the mind. And notion is a notion of the mind aswell. I think the ultimate investigation into the "outside" reality is leading us to the same, inevitable place that spirituality leads us. The simple recognition that there are no words. That we cannot describe reality and that any description of it is merely a description. It leads us to silence, to the absence of truth itself. But I do not think we are ready to accept that. Most spiritual teachers, including Leo, I think, cannot accept that. Even if they are shown the absence of truth, they find a way to make a truth out of it. Call it truth with capital T, call it god, call it anything. It seems like the mind just needs that, it needs the soothing notion that it finally understood, that it finally is awake. That it has seen the ultimate truth, which cannot be seen. That it has expirience the ultimate expirience, which cannot be expirienced. Still an ape babbling about, isn't it?

I have never really taken Anonymous (the hacker group) serious, but I have just watched a very interesting video, where the speaker is mentioning enlightenment, non-duality and meditation. @2:20 & @11:30 I really did not expect to hear any of this from a group like Anonymous. There is no doubt that they are spiritual, and the fact that they seem to be highly rational aswell tells me that they are most likely at stage Yellow (Spiral Dynamics). Of course we don't know who and how many people are behind this, but imagine a fully enlightened being sitting at a computer and hacking for the good of planet earth. Quite a funny picture. They are addressing future generations, so I would assume that their systemic analysis of the state of the world lead them to the conclusion that at our current stage we do not have a chance to change. It doesn't seem very likely to me that they are some new age hippies. But who knows, it's really hard to tell with just a video. Not sure how Anonymous has changed throughout the years, but weren't they a highly illegal hacker group that basicly exposed information to the public? How did they go from that to advertising meditation? What makes me sceptical is the entire elite vs rest of the world plotline. From my current point of view the world is a little more grey than that, and not as much of a conspiracy. But maybe I'm wrong and misinformed? But maybe it's a self-actualized person? What are your thoughts? I wasn't even aware of this video... they are using excerpts from the Samadhi movie. It seems like they are trying to get it closer to mainstream culture? Imagine someone like Leo sitting there are editing a Anonymous video.

Yes, on further analysis I agree with you. I saw a video where they said "We do forgive, but we do not forget.", so I guess whoever made the video made some progress? About your trouble with values, maybe read up on some Stoic Philosophy. Marcus Aurelius was a good example, he didn't like most humans, but he thought it was a human's duty to be social and help others, even if he didn't like them. Even though he fought for Rome, he seemed to be doing it for all of mankind. It's about reality. Someone is going to be emperor of rome, and no emperor will simply let foreign forces invade their country. If he didn't do the job, someone else would have done it, and he would have done it far worse than he did. In that way, being a soldier might be the better choice in creating harmony in this world than being a monk, simply because you can do the job that someone ele would have done anyway, and you can do it right. Empathy is important, but it can cloud your judgement for what you truly desire. If it is harmony you desire, you will find that sometimes it's best to end life, so that other life can be spared. Even to live, you are constantly killing, murdering and annhiliating "enemies". You don't view them as enemies, but you are still killing them. The trillions of bacteria that need to be sacrificed simply so the machine you call yourself can continue existing. It's not really a war, it's life. There is no good, there is no evil, there are just differences in what we want. Some people want power, some people want happiness. Some people want to live in peace, some people want to live in excitement. The winners are the winners, the losers are the losers, that is reality. There is no evil corporation, there is just difference in perspective. So, in the end it very much depends on what you want this world to be, and what you want your life to be. Whether you are enlightened or not, you will do what you want. What you want might simply change after losing your ego, but it will still be there. You might want more enlightenment, you might want peace, you might desire to desire nothing at all. Or you might want to murder, you might want to help others. The list goes on and on. So, first you have to be clear about what you want. In spiritual teachings, and this is something you should be aware of, the desired is often less about the state of others, but more about the state of yourself. You are not helping others to help others, you are helping others because you want to feel fulfilled, or because you feel unconditional love for them. So, if you desire to not hurt anyone ever, you will have to watch someone murder someone else. Because your desire to not hurt will be greater than the desire to help someone else. Or you might decide that you want to help, and doing that you will kill someone else to protect the innocent. It's simply a difference of desire, or as some people like to call it "morality". Be clear about what you want, because you might regret giving everyone unconditional love if what you truly desire is harmony. The lion killing the antelope creates harmony within nature, but so does the antelope escaping the lion. We human like to mess around with harmony, thinking that if we just fix it, it will be so much better. Let's say we get all the lions seperated from all the antelopes. Well, now the antelopes will breed freely and the ecosystem might collapse. The lions will kill each other because they merely eat meat. The world is more complex than your desires, and because your desires are not clear, you might do exactly what you do not want. Do you think Adolf Hitler was evil? Do you think he wanted to see the world burn? No, he had a desire to make the world a better place, but he couldn't see reality for what it is, and so he did the exact opposite of what he wanted. Germany didn't became the Third Reich, it became ruins and ashes. This is precisely what happens with lifes when they do not understand reality, and when the do not have a clear understanding of their desires. You have to understand that you never will be capable of making always the best decision, that will lead you to what you desire. Sometimes you might hurt when hurt was unnecessary, sometimes you might love where love will lead to destruction. Inaction will seem the only way for you to keep going, and this is why you have this very principle in spiritual traditions. Jesus died in vain, creating more destruction than he could have possibly imagined, merely because of his naive world view. So did many others, monks are a very good example. But you see, they do nto desire what I desire. They desire peace of their own mind, even if it means the rest of the world has to suffer. There is nothing bad about them, they are just working against my goals. Life is very much like a game. We are playing against each other, unless we follow the same goals. You will not change this, it is a fundametnal principle of nature. Without the play, harmony would not exist.

Everything in our universe seems to strive for harmony. From galaxies, stars and planets, to ecosystems, animals and bacteria. From atoms to the very laws of nature. Nature always is looking for the perfect flow, the equality of all matter and energy. It is striving for a perfect state of tranquility, ending in presumbably the heat death of the universe, in which all energy is evenly despersed. Conceptiolly, we all are energy. We all are matter. As far as we can tell, what we call energy and matter is consciousness. Chaos in consciousness is suffering, ultimate flow of consciousness is love. It is very interesting that suffering itself is resistence, the opposite of flow. When there is no resistence in mind, there is no flow. If everything is consciousness it might be that suffering is not just a property of mind, but a property of the laws of nature themselves. Everything that creates resistence must be avoided. This would mean that atoms themselves suffer, or in other words, the act of resistence within atoms is suffering itself, and a state of ultimate "satisfaction", a state in which an atom is completely in harmony with itself, not striving to change whatsoever, but in perfect balance, it is a state of love, or peace, or whatever you want to call it. When I say love I am not referring to the conventional use of the word, but for whatever enlightened people are referring to. Maybe even whatever Albert Einstein was referring to in his letter to his daughter. The love they are referring to seems to describe an attribute of the universe, rather than simply a mere feeling. Now, what if that "love" is nothing but the striving of the universe for harmony? What if we can become conscious of the laws of natures themselves, because after all we are nothing but the laws of natures themselves. Consciousness and the laws of natures are equal to each other, the one conceptional, the other what it really is. So because nature is always striving for harmony it is the grand goal of the universe. I am not saying there is a purpose behind it, I am saying that all purpose is created out of the striving for harmony. I am saying that everything in the universe, seen as a duality, is an interplay between harmony and chaos, love and suffering. I do not think that harmony or chaos has any real value, I am just saying that every single atom in this universe is striving to reach ultimate harmony, which is why something like life could even appear. Life is the most complex harmonic act the universe came up with. If the universe was not fundamentally striving for harmony, if it wasn't "build" that way, then life would have never appeared. It seems like our universe goes from ultimate chaos to ultimate harmony. From chaos, to complexity, to equality. The interplay of chaos and harmony is required for life to exist, because harmony itself is simlpy equality, meaning all "matter" in the universe is in the same state. This will be the end result of this universe. The intial chaos and the following striving for harmony allows everything that happens inbetween. All the galaxies, all the stars and planets, all life. All of it a result of chaos calming into harmony. Even if it seems that a being is creating chaos, within it's mind it is always trying to create harmony. It will always avoid suffering. Does that mean that in the end, all that will be left is harmony and love? Will we all become harmony and stay that way for eternity? Seems like we really got lucky with our universe? Anyone further thoughts on this? I am not sure if Harmony would be better described as the "end result", and love as the act of striving for harmony? Maybe we have to keep both words seperate. Becoming conscious of the striving for harmony is probably different from becoming conscious of harmony itself.

You seem to have a narrow understanding of "art". Your seemingly fundamental motivation for life, to "better the world", comes from art. Where do you think have you learned to be motivated to be good, to make the world a better place? Where does the desire come from? A world without art lacks beauty and meaning, including every beauty and every meaning. Do you understand that civilization would not exist without art? And you understand that art is the very essence of what motivates civilization? Striving for any higher value that goes beyond our primal desires requires meaning, and the creation of meaning is art. Virtue is art. Honor is art. Selflessness is art. This is why from the perspective of human beings it can vary so widely. What meant the world to a Samurai who committed hara-kiri seems to us completely nuts. But this is the beauty of art. It creates meaning where there has previously been none. A simple statue can become the symbol of an entire nation. The Statue of Liberty is an inherently meaningless object that makes human beings strive for freedom, justice and equality. The very ideas of freedom, justice and equality are nothing but art. That we value these ideas, that we consider them to be meaningful, is the very result of art. This is why if you destroy culture a nation inevitably fails to survive. This is precisely what is happening the US. Because people do not agree on ideas anymore, because they do not value the same idealogies, the actions taken by the nation become unstructured and self-destructive. It's like as if you couldn't decide if you wanted to become a couch potatoe or a martial artist. If you value both ideas equally, or worse, if none of them really have meaning to you, you will not take actions to accomplish any of them. You will not enjoy being a couch potatoe, and you will not be able to become a good martial artist. Your motivation for taking action will be disjointed, there will be one side of you that will value the comfort of sitting on a couch and being lazy, and there will be another side of you that will want to be the greatest martial artist in the world. What art can do is give one thing meaning over the other. This is the power of art. Infact, without it you will fail either way. You will not take any action, because you will value nothing in life. You will be nothing but an animal with rationality. If you want to take a good example for how to handle this, look at China. Why do you think is China so desperately protecting their own culture? They are simply wise enough to know that if their population does not agree on what is valuable, it will be very difficult to take the actions that will lead China to become the most powerful country in the world. If suddenly half of China's population became hedonistic, you'd quickly see the same problems developing in China as they do in the US. If you think about it this way, stories are what created civilization. Because we as human beings were able to agree on imaginary figures, determining imaginary laws and moral rules, we were able to work together and actualize all those laws and rules. If we wouldn't have agreed on art, we would still stumble through forests hunting and gathering our food on a daily basis. Art does not just initiate laws and morals, it keeps them alive aswell. What can hold an idea better than an object? Why do you think we even create objects and call it art? It reminds us of what we are supposed to find meaningful. Do you think greek and roman culture would exist without their art? The art is what reminded them of their values, of who and what they are. Now look back at all the movies you have consumed and think about how they have shaped your personality, your intellect and your morals. Think about how much they actually influenced you, and what kind of human being you'd be without them. Art is the only difference between a jihadist terrorist and the person who is sitting at the computer and reading this post. Everything around you, from the device you are using to the thoughts swimming in your mind were shaped by the art you have consumed in your life. It's very interesting how similar collectives and individuals actually function. Imagine a country without culture, imagine how it would act and what it would strive for? And then imagine a person without meaning in life, how it would act and what it would strive for? Then imagine the opposite, a country with unified and strong culture would act, where everyone agrees on what is valuable? And imagine a person who is very clear about their meaning in life, with the ability to suppress any desire but the desire to accomplish his goal? The person who is clear about their meaning of life will sacrifice comfort for the goal they want to reach, much like a country with unified culture will do the same with it's population. Yes, in short term perspective it feels horrible to sacrifice comfort or the happiness of your population, but if you reach the goal it seems to be worth it, doesn't it? You just have to be careful that you don't get too uncomfortable, or your population too unhappy, so that you, or the population, do not rebell against you.

Seems like this is Leo's recipe aswell, very interesting! Seems to be the foundation for motivation, in individuals aswell as collectives.

I will definitely try out the techniques. Some of the roles I mentioned, especially my little brother roles, are due to not wanting to make the other person feel awkward. I understand the role farely well, and why I am doing it, but it seems like I don't want to bring my sister in an awkward situation where she suddenly has to deal with another person. At this point, when I meet new people, I can pretty much control the role I am using. And this is what I'm doing with older people aswell, like grandmas and grandfathers. I adopt a role for their comfort, and it doesn't bother me at all. But with family like my sister it's more of because I want to avoid an awkward moment, for her aswell as for me. Because I can clearly see that she is playing a role aswell, and it's like "Oh well, if she is playing her role, I better play mine...". It's not really that much of a problem until a third person comes in, because the role is designed for her, and it works well, but when someone else comes along the role suddenly is useless. Sometimes it's so bizarre that I switch roles in mid conversation as I talk to someone else. Imagine a mother talking to her husband, and then her little child comes along. Everything about her changes in an instant, because she is suddenly concerned with how her child will receive her.

I have this issue that whenever I'm with a certain family member, I feel pressured to act a certain way. For example, when I'm with my sister, I immediately take on the role of a little brother, which means talking with a higher pitched voice, being gentler and generally seemingly less confident in whatever I am doing. It seems like I'm basicly losing all my masculinity in her presence. With my father I always feel like I need to be serious, and I have a hard time expression my true emotions infront of him. I also have roles when I'm with older people, but these roles really do not bother me. With my mother I seem to be most authentic and masculine, the same goes for cousins, aunts and uncles. Most of it is quite annoying though, any tips on how to resolve these roles?

Okay, I have this problem. From time to time I get this urge that I want to tell someone about something I have learned. I literally feel like I want to teach someone something, even if I'm not an expert at the topic myself. And the way I do it most of the time is by luring the person into questioning a random thing I say. So, I basicly provocate them into disagreeing with me, so that I can then go in and explain it to them. I'm not sure if it's about me trying to show the other person that I am just smarter and so wise and knowledgable, or if it's actually about teaching them. Actually, if I think about it, I sometimes do it with strangers too so it has to be about the showing off aspect of it. I know this is the most irritating thing there is for other people, because my father is doing the same. It's ridicilous, I always regret it because it's such a waste of energy, especially if I can't find a way to convey it to the other party. I also get super irritable and emotional about it, and I always tend to talk in absolutes, even though I know it's much more nuanced. So I bascily sound like an arrogant smartass who is trying to pick an intellectual fight with others. How can I get rid of this? I think I have to somehow stop identifying with my intellect or intelligence, because that's how my emotions bind to it. I really feel like it's important to be right, and maybe this is partly because we have a culture that values knowledge so much. But it's childish, because I'm not even 23 years old and I already think that I can go around and teach people. And the worst is, I know that most people just won't get it, either because I'm horrible at explaining or because they have a completely different perspective than me. The worst is when I actually win an argument and someone in the end agrees with me. I feel so dirty then, because I realize that winning an argument is not worth making the other person feel bad about being wrong. It's like a fight, and only one person can win. I feel bad when I lose, aswell as when I win, so it's literally pointless. So, what do I do about it, other than being mindful of it? How do I get rid of this desire? I don't know if supressing it will help. Why I wrote this post: I had an argument with some people on the internet about femininity and masculinity. I couldn't explain it to them, and they mocked me for believing in binary gender roles, even though I explained that I didn't mean it that way. It made me furious, and once more I realized that I was doing the entire trying to teach others bullshit. And now I am here, trying to solve the problem with the help of others. I would say part of the motivation why I wrote this post is just to let some steam off. But obviously I am also looking for help.

@Beyond Words I'm currently reading Mastery by George Leonard, as far as I can tell your definition of mastery differs from what is explained in that book. You don't really master a domain, any domain, you simply become a master of that domain. That means that you have learned to make the path a part of your being, not to have learned absolutely everything about the path. The path is endless, there is no final destination. Mastery is not something you achieve, it's something you become. As I see it, the thought of achieving mastery is the very problem of climactic anticipation that is contrary to mastery. As long as you meditate to become enlightened, you have not mastered meditation. To master meditation, you need to meditate for the very sake of meditation, and nothing else. Are you capable of meditating every single day for absolutely no reason and benefit, but simply for the same of meditation? You have to become a meditator, not a seeker for enlightenment. Otherwise, once you achieve enlightenment, you'll be done with it. You will not have mastered non-duality, because you have not made non-duality a part of yourself. It'll simply be a nice treat, and from there you will do whatever you want. Whatever you want will not be non-duality anymore, because all you wanted was to achieve it. I think this is where it becomes difficult to judge what would happen if we just "gave" everyone enlightenment. Take martial arts for example: To become a master of any martial art, you need to appreciate doing martial art, martial art needs to become part of your being. To achieve that, you need to develope discipline, patience, humbleness, self-control, consciousness and so on. Now, if we had a machine that could make everyone a perfect martial artist, what would happen? A master in martial arts will not go around and pick fights with anyone, because mastery required him to develope as a human being. If you get someone to the destination without him having to take the path, he will not be a master, he will simply have aquired a skill. A skill that will be completely worthless because it was effortless to achieve, and furthermore a skill that can now be abused. A master of non-duality is not someone who is enlightened. A master of non-duality is someone who made non-duality part of his being, of his behaviour, his thought, his actions, his morals, his entire life. His life is becoming enlightenment, not about enlightenment. This is the difference between a random schmuck achieving enlightenment and someone like Sadhguru making it his entire life. Enlightenment will not make you a better person, fully appreciating and understanding enlightenment in it's fundaments will. This applies to any path there is. You can be the greatest musician in the world and not have mastered it in any shape or form. Mastery is no skill, skill is a consequence of mastery. The quick fix will probably create more chaos than harmony. You cannot create a soldier simply by giving someone a uniform and weapon. To create a soldier, you need to transform a human being into a soldier. There needs to be a fundamental change, that change will become the soldier. Enlightenment is the weapon, and the soldier is a master of non-duality. To become a soldier, he has to shoot a weapon at some point, but notice that even if the soldier loses his weapon on the battlefield, it does not mean that he ceases to be a soldier. He infact can use his fist as weapons, if it came to the worst. On the other hand a random person can carry a weapon at all times and not be a soldier for one moment. I would say that there are few people who are enlightened, but far less that have mastered non-duality. Just as there are countless of people who can fight, there are very few who have mastered any given martial art. In this entire context even using the word mastered seems quite silly, because mastery is a path. You can be on the path of mastery right now, and you can spend your entire life on that path. You will not ever have mastered anything, you will simply continue the path of mastery, or not. A little bit of that problem I see in Leo, and really anyone who is using psychedelics to achieve enlightenment. It really makes it easier, a lot. And that is the reason why you will not fully understand it. Give someone 5-MeO-DMT and he will not have a clue what the hell is going on. Before you take 5-MeO-DMT I'd recommend to become someone who loves to meditate and self-inquire. Once you do, meditation and self-inquiry will not become about enlightenment, but about meditation and self-inquiry. Then you will have a much better time learning it, and once you will be enlightened, you will have a far better understanding of what it even is that is happening. It's very much like someone just suddenly becoming a picasso. That person will not have appreciated the complexity of drawing a simple line, because he never had to draw thousands and thousands of lines. There will be no difference to him, he will not see the subtlety. The same goes for psychedelics. It's a boom, a quick fix. I don't know Leo, but maybe if he was honest with himself he would see that he takes these psychedelics because he is impatient? If simply being enlightened is a goal then that's not a problem, but if he wants to understand enlightenment more fully then he will need to go the hard, long path. It might even be too late now, because he already had the expiriences. He might not be capable of going back to less consciousness states, and thus might not ever see the mechanics unfolding as the mind becomes more conscious? I do not know, but that would be something to comtemplate on, especially because Leo's path is so young. You will not even be able to fully appreciate the destination if you are not aware of the complexity of the path. A simple breath, a simple thought, or even a bird twitching in the trees can be revealed to have infinite complexity. For you, a bird twitching in the trees is simply a bird twitching in the trees. The one who has spend thousands of hours focusing on the twitching of birds in the trees, will know that every single twitch is absolutely unique. He will know the differences, the qualities, the complexities of tweeting, and he will recognize that he will never appreciate the full, infinite complexity of even that simple thing. Why I wrote this post: I am currently in a mood to write something, and that's what I did. I enjoy writing about what I have learned, even though I know that what I have learned might not be correct. What I wrote I did out of a feeling to wanting to correct someone elses assumptions. I still feel the need to share my knowledge, and I do not spend enough time implementing it. I value my opinions too much and care too much about expressing them. I actively looked for an oppurtinity to teach someone even though I am not yet knowledgable or wise enough to do so. I also feel a need to challenge Leo, to have him confront my ideas.