WaterfallMachine

@Epiphany_Inspired I think I might be able to answer your question on paradigms here. I only watched that video recently and I've only known about Leo's videos for about a few days, but I'm familiar with some of the concepts in them. I've went through a lot of time questioning random paradigms this way without even knowing the word paradigms and while I don't think I'm at Leo's level (This guy's knowledge from the sounds of it is wayyyy better than mine.), I still think I might know something. Let's concretize this in a specific situation. Let's pick a small situation between two people. I remember at some point in my life, I noticed my mom's paradigm is often the prioritization of practical needs in life. Food, health, finances and basic hygiene. She was a health nut and yes, she was one of those nagging moms about being healthy. That's one bubble. Haha. And my own paradigm is all about how knowledge is important being the encompassing reason for much of my own different actions in life, even just for its own sake. So lots of time on my interests and hobbies here. And boy, did I get pissed about being nagged all the time to spend more time learning about health than my "less important non-productive" interests. I thought my mom was way too shallow in thinking about everyday things. And this is the other bubble with the other bubble arguing with each other. Haha. These bubbles got closed in by a bigger bubble when I realized that practicality is stil an important need in my life and had a greater desire to care about my health later on. I still cared about knowledge for its own sake but I shouldn't let it be the only thing I need in life and my goals in life expanded, into the bigger bubble. I took the good parts of each side and ignored the excess of use along the way. And for this, I had to be open minded enough to consider. And stop insulting myself whenever I would consider her perspective. While getting out of my comfort zone of actually taking action in more practical aspects of life. Another phenemenon is popping a bubble. Let's say a whole paradigm of thinking of a person in service is how they are the "saviors" of others. Other people are helpless victims to be cared for. He changed his paradigm and popped his bubble when he realized that other people could help themselves and he could act as a guide to teach others how to help themselves rather than just helping them all the time. It's the difference between telling people what the answer in a math test is rather than how to solve the equation. For this, he had to doubt and surpass his ego fears of "wanting to be the hero," and having people praise him. He had to point out certain traps in his mind ("You see, this person is weak now so she'll be weak forever.") He had to take action beyond his comfort zone to actually try to help people this way. Think of ideas, research, make the plan, start doing little steps this way. From what I've seen on Leo's videos, there's an emphasis on really experiencing something rather than just reading it to really understand things — and to go into a worldview might be also doing the worldview. And one day the bubble pops. It's wrong. Totally wrong. But he still encompasses before and after a larger bubble of having a reason to help people and he still uses the bubble when it's true that that person can't help themselves much like maybe paralyzed people, but those are more exceptions. And there's the possibility of a different bubble in service if medicine can find a cure for that in more advanced treatments. There are of course, non-contradictory bubbles. A bubble for relationships and a bubble for what good art is is in a person of course different. And if the whole amount of bubbles is encompassed with a larger bubble is interesting to me. I don't know either. How do bubbles from relationships and what good art is connects? Maybe the bubble thinking those are contradictory in itself is a bubble and there's another bubble that believes everything is connected like when I read about cross teaching as an idea for education. What if people can mix perspectives on politics with how science is going for example? The politics of science and the science of politics. Or it could be the idea encompassing all that there's good knowledge to be found in something that is overall bad. Maybe the biggest bubble would be more on what our view of reality is. It could be a religion and it could be no religion. You can say we're all in a simulation and you can say there is something non-physical as a bubble that takes all the little bubbles. Maybe the biggest bubble is about your highest motivation in life, namely satisfaction or happiness for many people and all actions below are made for it. Though, Leo mentions that saying reality exists is a paradigm in itself. How can you be so sure reality exists? Isn't that an assumption of itself? And more interesting is how he says your identity and self is a paradigm. That language and thought is a paradigm. Whoa. Have to checkt this out. Haha. Well, I'm done explaining here. Maybe it's too detailed? If yes, sorry. I do long explanations to myself alone often as a way of making sure I understand shit. . . really really really well. Tell me if you have any further or opposing thoughts.

Money is limited on buying books and other payed resources so I have to ask about free resources first. Thank you in advance!

I searched on google about this Alan Watts person. His ideas seem really interesting. Any good free resources on him I can try?

I think what changed me the most is something simple. Everyday consistent practice and following through. Small things can become very big things and those things can add up over time. Experience adds up to faster and faster results over time. Gathering a little more bravery, a little more gratitude, a little more discipline, a little more objectivity, a little more kindness, a little more wisdom, a little more this and that until the results add up. But I guess another thing that helped me was self awareness. Over time, I understood the difference between learning something conceptually and experiencing it. You can talk and understand something but experiencing is different. How have you seen this problem in your life? How does it manifest? How does the better ways of handling it manifest? What flaws are you not aware of? What strengths unused is there? So I became well into tests and guides for self awareness. Such as Mbti, the enneagram, VIA Strengths test, The Graves Model, Oldham's Personality test and more. For Mbti, I'm not saying the dichtonomies of introverted-extroverted, sensing-intuition, feeling-thinking and perceiving-judging. I mean the cognitive functions, the really specifc and technical understanding of this which I find is more accurate than the first. You might want to look through the sites Personality Hacker and Personality Junkie for more. These things I use more as guides though. It's not perfectly accurate. But it's like looking for one person in the entire world. Typing systems allow you to get hints. "He's in this country somewhere." "It has a very hot climate there." "It has this specific slang in where he's from." It doesn't really give the entire picture of your unique self but it does serve as a good guide.

Man, sounds like a tough situation. Sorry for what's going on. I remember when I was younger, a teacher announced to us students that she expects more from us. We better learn from our mistakes the first time we make it. We shouldn't be such loud brats. I thought she was wrong. How in the world do a bunch of crazy students become disciplined and quiet in one day? Nearly everything really worthwhile takes time and effort. And lots and lots of mistakes. There's this advice to different careers and it applies to your life as well. Writers are advised to edit their work over and over for the best work. The best inventors in history weren't overnight successes, but people who patented so many inventions that eventually a few of them would become really influential. Salesmen are advised to try meeting people again and again even if they keep getting rejected. What matters less is what you can't control, what you can't know soon enough and what you can't do soon enough, but what you can control, learning from your mistakes. Some people blame others too much in their lives and play the victim. Other people put so much blame on themselves that they become too guilty of what has happened. And I think you are this. I understand that it's hard, but your daughter could have done something. Your son in law could have done something else. And your rest of your family could as well. Don't take the blame. Take responsibility and realize you don't have to take responsibility alone. When I give advice to people like this and these people get better, I don't put all the credit to myself. These people could have just left, denied their problem and did nothing to change it. There was credit in others' action. And in turn, your son in law could have changed even a bit as well. Im not saying to be utterly cruel to other people and start the blame game again. Maybe take time to understand that not everything is in your control and what you can't control is something you're not supposed to guilt yourself in.

Well, I disagree. I started personal development at age 11 or 12. Mostly because I was going through a tough time and wanted to figure out a way out of it. I had some pretty intense mental health problems back then. So it became an early wake up call for me to change. My school was one of those schools that encouraged students to learn from their mistakes, that they can change and regularly showed examples of people who picked themselves up from the most horrible of situations. And while I was pretty hopeless back then, that left a hint of hope for me. Over the years, I spent time reading every life advice I could find to get out of this. I looked for every advice I could find to be happy. I tried confidence raises, CBT, mindfulness, read on the philosophy of life and wisdom, growth with personality typing, gratitude, kindness and more. Over the time, I'd learn how to make habits. I read every damn productivity tip I could find and try many of them. I read on grit, growth mindset, how to beat procrastination, concentration tips, behavioral psychology, organization and discipline. Pretty amazing for someone who was normally seen back then as intelligent but really lazy. I studied myself. I learned about my own personality, formed my own philosophy of life in depth questioning what my parents and teachers have said and learned about my own personal strengths and weaknesses. I would painstakingly take time to figure out my way of overthinking and develop my own problem solving skills by reading business guides on them. I would slowly figure out my way out of lack of empathy and start with some read up on social skills. I'd learn to figure out to get out of my own really over self reliant and secretive mindset and ask for help more, be comfortable more with being vulnerable. Id study the science of learning. The Feynman technique. Mmemonics. Mind maps. Deliberate practice. Different kinds of note taking and more. And now I'm in senior high school. And life's not perfect, but it's a lot better. A lot calmer. Well, I guess it's possible. Maybe this is what happens when you grow up as the kid reading about wisdom for fun, reading books meant for older people and hanging out in forums full of older people. Like I'm doing now. Like I'm pretty much doing most of the time in my Internet life.

So I've been working on the need to be affirmed and value myself more for some time. I don't know how long — I don't know when it started. Below is a jumble of things I did but not in order. I heard it has to do with lack of confidence so I spent time trying to boost it. I tried new things, hobbies and achieved them. I learned to highlight my small wins. I battled my habit of overthinking and was able to do a lot of progress where I can step into things without overpreparing or overthinking that much. But the new skills I gained were partly things I was proud of and partly things I thought was never enough. There was always someone better. More to learn that I haven't. I heard it has to do with being honest to others and yourself. So I practiced lessening overexaggeration of my achievements. I opened up to a forum where people emotionally confess their troubles (7 cups of tea — a free therapy site and some others.) and practiced not hiding the more vulnerable parts of myself and made some long term friendships there. But still, I cared about image somehow. That my story would be placed in the most interesting said way but still with truth in it. And I got the sense that I wasn't being listened to enough when it was about the most accepting place I ever seen. What about those people who passed by and didn't react — how did they? But I kept telling myself that the people who came to appreciate, talk and listen with me were good people, but what if they hid something? Talk behind my back? Then I thought maybe it had to more with my beliefs and mindset than my actions. So I did a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness for self esteem. It got better. But it wasn't enough. I made sure to count people who really did help me even in vulnerability, especially my family. Those times when I wasn't the charming, easygoing, hardworking, pleasant and intelligent, the top 10 in grades student and jack of all trades in my hobbies. It got better, but it wasn't enough. Then I heard maybe it had to with lack of kindness. I heard if you focused more on what others want and like, you focus less on yourself. So I did. Months of loving kindness meditation. And I did grow warmer and more needed to help others. But with that, I still yearned for more praise, more success and more achievements. I'm aware of what I want. I don't sacrifice my needs for other's interests. I take the life path I want. I go at my own pace. I spend time in things I care about. I can reject what people want for what I like. I've reflected for a year thinking about my own personality, my preferences, my life philosophy and all that and I follow it. But there's something in me — that wants to reject my actions, reject my mindset, reject all this and just want more praise. There is this thought in my mind that says . . . I haven't done enough. Am I still unaware of something? Lacking something? Anything? I don't know.

But I've been practicing that kind of thought process for years. 5 years specifically. I'm alright with accepting myself feeling this way. I understand that I'm human and I get these kinds of flaws in my head. I understand it's okay to be slow at this. But from my understanding, what I lack is acceptance of the situation. I can certainly come to feel my feelings and really experience them, but the pain is still there somehow. Maybe because a few of the actions I've taken are new and still out of my comfort zone — that it can still be painful at times. But I don't really see action as 100% a distraction to internal stability. It can be a practice to test if certain beliefs that caused fears are wrong by testing it out in the real world and I have. And it did made some progress. But maybe you're right. Maybe I do lack acceptance of my thoughts and feelings. Maybe there is progress, but I still suck at it somehow. At the past, I had problems with overthinking and overpreparing. And I had made so many ideas and plans over time from hesitation that gathered lots of time for a very action oriented stage of my life to take over. I've actually accomplished a lot in action and it actually made some progress, but maybe it's time to deal with my situation internally more again. Time to reflect on what I had experienced, what I'm feeling and pay attention to acceptance more. Maybe I'm emotionally detaching too much again. Happens from time to time. What do you think? Whatever it is, I'm sold enough to be probably off meditating while waiting for a reply. Sounds painful really considering that I've done this before in other fears, but well, nothing much else I could do.

Ah, thank you. But what do you mean nothing to change it? What is this "it?" How else can I accept this?

I guess what first led me to meditation these past few years was my mental health problems — depression and anxiety all over. These days I'm a lot calmer and tend to be relaxed most of the time — that the difference in having absolute happiness and happy most of the time doesn't seem to have much difference and reward to it. Though, it could be beneficial really. I have some ambitious dreams about helping people in the world and the emotional stability could help in whatever problems might come in my journey to this. My life is good now but who knows in the future? If I don't remain strong for others, how can I change things for other people? Another thing is that I'm curious. I've had a history of going through different philosophical ideas obsessively, questioning my major beliefs and changing large parts of my worldview. I just get a kick out of learning new perspectives, especially if that perspective connects to about every major part of my life — which from my impression over learning about Enlightenment seem to be going to way bigger than anything I've learned in this area. Also, the part that it mentions having a lot of fear is something familiar to me — I'm not saying I'm not going to be scared going through this, from the sounds of how intense this experience is, it probably would. It's more that I've been through intense fear going through changing my worldview in the past — even crying for several days — yet I continued because I was so damn interested. It's like I'm an adrenal Junkie — but for ideas rather than physical pursuits. I was scared shitless over learning about enlightenment but it was also very exciting somehow. it will take years from the sounds of it, if it's even possible, — but hey, I can wait. Meditating for so long has made me attached to my time meditating and it's already a simple pleasure just going through this practice. Usually other people know me as the kind of person who wants new ideas all the time and that's true, but meditation's repetitiveness, discipline and need for consistency provides something lovely on the hidden side of me that wants that. This sounds harder emotionally but I guess I can follow through. I like learning new things and there is a pleasure in slowly understanding something that you put effort in. My own life philosophy is built with curiosity in the top of it all — with the idea that curiosity will win over fear more than bravery could. I guess I wanted to test my curiosity over fear — see how far I could go and work on it. I already do this in following through with different projects and hobbies but this one sounds like a major project that sounds especially interesting and challenging. Honestly, throughout my spiritual practice, I've struggled with needing success and affirmation. But this seems to be going away — mostly, at least. But a few times here and there can still appear and this could apply to my practice here. Are those good reasons? Or no? Looking forward to a response.

So as you can see I'm a newbie on this forum and I've been watching the video on the intro on Enlightenment. The thing is, I thought I was entirely new to this concept but after watching it and meditating in many different ways for 5 years for nearly everyday for at least 20 minutes (Which can go to 40-60 minutes if like) with daily mindfulness (like eating and walking), I could see how meditation introduced this concept to me in different ways in the past. It was like in different sources, I was getting different pictures of the zoomed in body parts of a giant and Leo actually showed me a full body picture of who the giant is. Just going to make a metaphor here to see if I understand the concept well. Tell me what you think about it please. If it's bad or good or anything. If you agree, disagree or are not sure. It reminds me of the term "many" or "little" argued in philosophy. Imagine a grain of sand and a whole pile of sand. Where does it become little to many? At 50 grains of sand? At 1,000 grains of sand. Isn't it a weird concept to think of the number before it as small? 49 grains of sand is small? 999 grains of sand is small? Different people can argue different numbers for what is little or many. How many meters does it take for something to become near to far? How many minutes does a short time become a long time? It's like ourselves. Where does our parts of ourselves become us? You can put a line somewhere or a line another place but probably no one can agree on where it is. It's vague. It doesn't seem to be anywhere. And any labels are more generalizations or guides than the truth is. I remember a meditation practice I had for 10 days that taught me about this. It was a meditation on noticing change (Source : Headspace) in your surroundings, in your thoughts and in your feelings. You might label yourself as "a grumpy person" or a "happy person" but when I noticed what I experienced, was that these emotions were always changing in subtle or large ways. You might think of yourself as a person ruled by your heart or head but I noticed that I could be one at times and another one at times. With this, many labels seemed rather vague. And strangely it seemed, in my daily life I was better able to separate what things are with what things I label actually is. And with that, allowed greater insight, better decisions and calmness. I didn't jump to the worst conclusions from anxiety or best conclusions from excitement when it came to the future as much a sense before. It was more "I observed this and this and that. Most likely it is this from what I observed but I don't know for sure. The rest I don't know." I was so afraid of not having labels, a full understanding, a certainty to things even if the certainty in being able to "know" things were bad. Now I'm just fine not knowing most of the time.

Hey thanks for all the people who replied to my question! And thank you to anyone else who'd like to explain after I posted this update. It's still one of the most confusing ideas I ever bothered to understand, if not the most, — but it seems a little bit clearer. It helped in making my decision on whether I should follow through with this or not. I've watched the intro video on spiritual enlightenment from Leo and it did highlight on some major rewards mentioned here (Finding the "Truth") and not mentioned here ("Absolute freedom from negative emotions.") . I actually got depressed and intensely fearful for a day before recovering the next day. Heavy stuff, huh? Haha. But at least it didn't last a week like other people did — I guess I went through too many intensely horrible experiences in my life and got through them to be that affected. But I am curious on what this Truth is. I certainly haven't experienced it but something does seem off to me — and now that I heard the explanation, I recognized that I actually introduced to some meditations made to this but I was never really directly told what the point was as directly as Leo explained. I guess I'm convinced enough from the posts here and what Leo said to try this idea out. But it seems the decision to follow through with this is settled. After watching the second video for spiritual enlightenment with Leo, I don't have any major problem in life I need to focus on. I do have issues to go through — but not anything particularly urgent and too time consuming. I've also spent some years already in personal development somehow. (Though, not high as 10 years. More half of that.) Maybe I'm ready. Maybe I'm not. Heh. What do you think? I guess I'll ask more questions if I need to. Tell me if you have any advice to me please. Well, I'd guess I'd see you guys around.

Hi Ramu! What's this consciousness thing you're talking about? SOUL's right in that I'm a newbie and have no idea what in the world you are talking about at this stage. But hey — any resources I could go look for with this idea? Probably not a good idea to start something so advanced at the moment from the sounds of it but maybe when I get further down the line I can check it out.

Arrogance is not measured by how big you see yourself as. I was going through a similar situation when I read Nelson Mandela's biography, someone who spent his life trying to figure out how to free Africa from racism. He was always humble, admitting his mistakes and respected the people even if they were were below him in status as president. But yet, he had the confidence to change things even if that dragged him to prison before. Arrogance is simply when you do not take time to realize your mistakes, whether as an utter failure or an utter success. Humility is not thinking of yourself as horrible in something. Another useful way of seeing things was from an anime Mob Psycho 100 which from its title sounds like the last place you'd go to for spiritual advice, but trust me on this. Shigeo in the show was a shy kid who was gifted with amazing psychic powers, able to hurl massive objects with his mind and exorcise powerful evil spirits. . Reigen, a psychic conman, decided to take him in his business as a child. As his "student", Shigeo earnestly remembers his master's first words of advice. It went something like this. "Remember. You are not special. Yes, you're gifted with psychic powers. But no. It's the same as people who get high grades, people who are amazing in sports, people who have great social skills and are popular in school. Everyone has something they're good at and this is what you're good at." Later in the anime, Shigeo and his friends would go defeat in summary a bunch of powerful psychics. They were arrogant. They wanted power. They believed they could take over the world and were trying to. They were an organized institution. Yet in the end, everyone was punneled to the ground in defeat. Reigen would say that they were nothing and they weren't special. But as Shigeo mentions, his powers did not give him high grades in school or popularity. He wasn't that good in a lot of things. He recognized that being powerful at one thing didn't cure his low self esteem. He was human. And these evil doers in humiliation, came to realize they were human too. Basically, you might know a lot of things but there are many things other people know more than you. There are people who have to spend years in school and career for an understanding of an expertise.. People with specific experience with a problem in their lives. People who are jack of all trades. People with different interests and talents. Ask, "What do you not know?" Something humanity doesn't know. Something other people know. I meditated on this question for a long time and I came to understand. Sounds a bit cheesy maybe? Heh. But I loved that show.

Oh, I've forgotten those studies. Thank you for pointing it out.

There are actually studies made on the correlation between the amount of financial wealth and happiness. I remember that people in the poverty line tend to be more unhappy than people above them. But at a certain level, this happiness increase stays stagnant. When people get adequate needs to survive and gain opportunities in this world then they have more chance of being happy. But people who are richer don't have as much difference in happiness after this line. Also, it's also been scientifically reported that people who use their money to buy experiences are happier than ones who buy material things. Ex. Travel to another country compared to buying new shoes. Buying a guitar to learn how to play it when compared to buying an expensive watch. In my opinion, money can influence happiness on what you buy. Being healthy has been studied to make people happier so advice on how to exercise more will make you happier. A book on how to be happier will make you happier if you do it. Paying for a therapist for mental health problems make people happier. Etc.

Hmm. Interesting. So you're saying I really have to do it to figure it out. I've tried an exercise for 20 minutes to have a mini exploration and I find that there's some sort of fear that I've been wrong all this time and some suspicion over what could be wrong in my beliefs. But also the idea is that it seems very obvious, but also not obvious if that makes sense. And recently tried a 10 day practice on this recently before meeting this site. I guess I'm pretty newbie in my experience so I guess I'll just see how it goes as time passes. I doubt I've reached any sort of major milestone really. Though, I was getting the impression that there was some sort of emotional benefit to this even if it wasn't a mastery from the small instances I've seen this type of thinking. If you have no sense of you or well, whatever that confusing mess of ideas is, isn't there a liberation from self esteem? That you don't have to be endlessly reminding yourself how good you are or how better you are because there is no you? So I was imagining some sort of lessening of fear towards things in life. Is that true? Or is it some kind of myth? Maybe a sort of half-truth? And I was also getting some impression of greater kindness somehow? If you don't view yourself as separate from your surroundings, doesn't that allow for greater compassion to others? Hmm. Confusing. But I like confusing things.