Ian

If I may, I would like to share a rule of thumb that Matt Kahn states a lot. "If you wouldn't say it to a five-year old child in pain, don't say it." At this time, your father does not require your wisdom. Your truth is simply your perspective on life, and nobody else needs to know about it, unless they ask you for it (which I'm assuming you've done here by posting on a forum!). Be honest with yourself, and you will find less of a need to talk about your truths with others. What your father requires now, more than ever before, is your heart-centred love. Listen to him. Comfort him. Be there for him. If you find yourself unable to give such love, then be honest with yourself and accept that, and work on loving your own heart first. Such adversity and chaos is the perfect time for you to strengthen your bond with your father. Show how much you care for him, and then maybe, when he is ready, he will ask you for such wisdom. Tread softly

Being hypocritical involves lying to oneself. Such deceit is denying oneself the love all beings so desperately need. It is a behaviour that signals to you that this person is not yet in a position to be able to love themselves. In which case, your highest response is to open your own heart to them, if you are able to (you may not yet be in a position to do so, and that is fine). I cannot tell you what to say, as that will come intuitively to you in the moment. Whatever action you take, is the correct one for that exact moment. What you can do, however, is to set the intention to give the most loving action you can, going forwards - make that commitment. I hope my service is of use to you

You have beautiful wisdom @haai14. In humble service, I am grateful to be able to offer some additional insight. Every single emotion, every single thought, and every single action are manifested for you to accept and welcome into your loving presence. These are all aspects of the divine, and deserve as much respect and love as everything else. Blessings for your journey

It's wonderful that you love the Spiral Dynamics model as much as I do, but I feel you are underestimating its profundity I had to laugh when you said, "I've kinda been ignoring green", for which I can only apologize. The transition from orange to green marks a profound shift in outlook, where you begin to authentically desire to connect with the hearts of others, and reject competition and manipulation, exactly of the sort you boast about. Even more momentous is the transition from green to yellow, where one appreciates that everything is completely interwoven, and that 'self' is far more than just the body - everything IS you, and you are divine. The transition from yellow to turquoise is a subtle one, but it comes with complete acceptance of whatever arises (including your own feelings), intuitive harmony with the universal will (you desire that which the universe is going to give you), and complete surrender to love. (Note that these are just from my experience, and that there are many different possible nuanced expressions of these stages. http://www.goconscious.com/home/articles/levels_of_consciousness_and_the_enneagram.html is a fantastic site for twinning spiral dynamics with the enneagram) Your words are not yet vibrating at these higher levels, but they will, in time. You are on a most miraculous journey, StarfoxEpiphany. I love you.

Congratulations, you've realized that life does not always present you with perfect information! Fortunately, the human being comes equipped with a most remarkable tool for dealing with decision making in the face of complex and incomplete information, and it's called intuition! Listen to your intuition and have faith that it will point you in the right direction. Leo has released a video on this

I really like Scott Peck's definition from his book, "The Road Less Travelled" (on Leo's recommended list - and definitely on mine!). He defines love as, "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." The full explanation of this is rather nuanced, but I'll try my best to explain it. The key word in the definition is 'will'. Love is not a feeling, but an action, a choice. Any time you take any action which helps you or others to grow as a person, you are, in essence, creating love. He goes on to describe all the ways we mistakenly use the word love and what he means by "extending one's self" ***ORIGINAL IDEA*** Peck doesn't talk about enlightenment explicitly, but I think it's fairly clear to see that once one transcends ego and the whole of reality becomes unified, then the definition could become even simpler. "one's own or another's" becomes a meaningless distinction. "Will" no longer exists. "Spiritual growth" is simply being. So once all these partitions are removed, love becomes indistinguishable from reality itself. Isn't that cool? ***END ORIGINAL IDEA*** I have no idea how far along the self-actualization journey you are Daniel, but I hope you can glean something useful from this

It is my view that the world would be a much happier place if we could just delegate the things we didn't want to do to people who do want to do them. Back to reality, if there's a tangible reward for doing it, I can motivate myself, but otherwise, I just try to cut it out of my life entirely. I cannot stress how amazing it feels to become more and more independent from just about anyone and anything. So my advice to you probably won't be incredibly helpful, but I challenge you to question why you think you have to do certain things. Is it just herd mentality? Work out what bad thing you think will happen, then ask yourself, why is that bad? Is it because some else says it's bad? Then the flip side is to work out what you do want to achieve and work out how you can go about doing that. Question everyone and everything...

Hey all, I'm looking for advice on improving my active reading. Some prompters: What frame of mind do you put yourself in before reading? What sort of notes do you take? Do you annotate the book itself? What questions could I be asking myself when reading?

Honestly, I think there is more to sleep than just the number of hours you get. I have absolutely no evidence other than my own experience, but I am at least 5 times happier being awake 11am - 2am than 7am - 10pm. I get to wake up to glorious sunshine (sometimes) and I enter my best flow state at around 10pm. I absolutely adore night time. I know I shouldn't "want what's natural if what's natural is shit" (Leo Gura), but in this case I think going with what feels like my natural sleep cycle is what's best. There is nothing inherently more productive about certain hours of the day - the only consideration is when other people will be available. If that's not an issue in your life, then choose what gives you the most energy and ability to get things done!

Something that just came to me having read all your posts is Bloom's Taxonomy: Moving up the taxonomy, questions to ask while reading could look like (thanks to everyone who's suggested these!): Remembering - What did I just read? Understanding - Could I explain what I read to someone else? Do I fully understand the author's intention? Applying - How can I integrate what I have read into my life? How could I change my behaviours/actions to improve my life based on what I read? Analyzing - What sort of nuances are present here, and how will they affect the outcomes of any behavioural changes? How does this connect to the rest of the book/other things I know? Evaluating - With the most open of minds, just how useful is what I have read to me? Is it a priority? Creating - Can I combine what I have read with other things I know to create an entirely new powerful self-actualizing idea?

Mad Cat: Self-help books. With regards to focus, sometimes I don't really know what I want out of the reading; it's more exploratory than specific answer-seeking. Loving the advice, especially the holistic perspective - I do tend to find I cannot easily work out what the book has been 'about'. I had to read your post about three times, so maybe I've already got more of this sorted than I thought Ivelina: Two pages at a time sounds good to try. What sort of notes do you write?

Accepting drudgery and following ones bliss are NOT contrary, in my opinion. I think the error in thinking comes from conflating 'avoiding pain/hard work' with 'following your bliss'. Following your bliss is moving towards that thing which your authentic self 'desires' most AND having the discipline to overcome the inevitable resistance. This does mean it can be incredibly tricky to know when to jump ship and make a radical life change (as I recently experienced myself...), or persevere with your current activity. As for your mathematics situation, only you can know if that's what you authentically want and whether it is worth mastering.

If you're in yellow, then tell us about your green stage and why you abandoned it?

Thinking about this a bit more deeply, I can see this as a problem I also share. If you're familiar with the Graves' Model, http://vievolve.com/values-systems-4/ I believe that I have in the last couple of years been moving from stage blue to stage orange. So as I understand the model, I need to live through everything that stage orange can bring me (living somewhat selfishly) before I can start authentically devoting my life purpose to others - stage green. Would I be onto something in saying that forcing yourself into stage green prematurely is a trap, when creating a life purpose whilst moving from stage blue to stage orange? Denis, if you deem this too off topic, I'm more than happy to start a new thread

And here is the opposite point of view, for some healthy balance! Whilst this process is a marathon rather than a sprint, not facing ones fears and procrastinating the 'most important piece of the puzzle of life' (except for enlightenment) seems like a bad move from my largely uninformed perspective I would suggest you think back to the 10 commitments from the start of the course and honestly ask yourself if you meant them when you made them. I certainly did, because I, like Leo, can see the importance of getting this sorted. If you did, then your next steps should be obvious

It's certainly heavy going Denis, but it's definitely not boring! I am currently on video 57, and Leo has actually just talked about this exact problem - thinking the result will be 'some grand life purpose', when actually it can easily just be realising that the thing you would find most fulfilling is something you are already doing. I did struggle at the start of the values assessment (video 42) with the transition from absorbing theory to having to think pretty deep, but I'm really happy with my values list ^this.