kieranperez

I'm honestly close to tears watching that. Wow... This definitely sparked something. I don't know what. Man... Love that girl This is an example of inspiring, healthy, and conscious stage green looks like too

My first thought when I read this: I LIKE THIS GUY!!! Hahahaha YEP! You'd be shocked at how slow they go. However, they (along with most East Africans) also have a genetic advantage so I wouldn't attribute their success just to that but as far as that example, you're on point.

@Bluebird ON THE MONEY

Okay. So I'm living at home at 23 right now and trying to figure out a way to first get out of here. I really don't want to keep working in low end retail jobs where I'm only being paid $13 p/hour here in San Francisco where it's impossible to get hours. I feel like the longer I've been doing this the more I've gotten comfortable doing this. I know @Leo Gura has suggested before that it might be worth picking up a valuable skill like programming and working in that domain for a bit because my metta plan is to eventually renounce and pursue full enlightenment and God and surrender everything and then come back (I don't want to go into the full details of that since that's a whole long forum thread in itself but if you want to know my rough plan - read the monk memoir in the booklist in the enlightenment section). I'm on Lynda.com right now and looking at all these courses and I know it's a good resource but the reality is - despite the fact that I'm committed to renunciation and doing this down the road and God is what I really want (to be my real offering and service to the world when I come back to serve my real hero's journey) - I'm not turned on by any of this stuff. I'm moving into Stage Green now where I've been craving to be more artistic and free from this left brained approach to work. Right now I really want to get more life experience, travel, invest in my own self-education since I didn't have that in college (particularly since I dropped out after Freshman year), etc. Could really use some outside opinions on this. I also don't want to have a business right now to start because I think that'd be too much on my plate emotionally more than anything. Also because I don't want to invest in just some bullshit business that I'm not clear on or don't give a shit about. I feel like I'm being idealistic but the authentic motive and intuition is there. I just don't want to plug myself into this pragmatic system doing hyper left brained work.

When you personally talk about enlightenment, what exactly are you referring to? Are you talking about reaching absolute total consciousness of everything and all facets of reality and you embody it? No-self? Disidentification with the body and mind? I'm just curious because even in deep spiritual circles don't really go into what they mean by this when they talk about enlightenment.

I think for me it's more just getting all the main trauma out there and dealt. After awhile I think all this stuff can be like anything else where one tries to reach this kind of perfection in purifying every source of trauma they've ever had in their life. Definitely interesting though. I just want to get all the "main" emotional and psychological stuff dealt with and also connect with my intuition and heart with what I really want out of this life and a deeper vision for my life and then take action because I'm still very VERY unclear on what it is I want. I feel like my mind and conditioned desires and obligations are pulling me 10000 different directions but I still have no idea with what I want even after taking the life purpose course and I don't want to commit to doing work that sure, it get's me money after years of work but it really it's all just bullshit that I was going to transcend anyway and it's hard for me to connect with what I really deeply want because I'm stuck in a dysfunctional family relationship and I'm home most of the day. To be honest neither have I. I've tried multiple times but I salivate so much that I can't keep it up for that long because I keep having to swallow. Same goes for my meditation and I don't know how to solve it.

90% of people don't even know how to walk, run, or even bend down to pick up something off the floor properly. I wouldn't even go into the under exercise part LOL.

There's other runners besides Sahil and I on here? LOL I didn't even know I haven't paid much attention to the physical exercise stuff on here personally as I already have my resources for that but one thing I've noticed here from what I have seen on running is that people assume that running is just this spiritual flow, easy peasy, thing and I'm sitting over here and can already tell they have no idea what real training is. Not to say you can't get to that flow state, I've had legitimate highs like I've had when I used to pop ecstasy on really long runs, but those who think running is some effortless thing that doesn't take hard arduous commitment are like the "spiritual" people who want to feel good all the time and pass around crystals and nonsense. For the most part I agree with this because I get what you're saying but I notice a lot from the other side of the coin the toxicity of this alpha male egotistical drive to exert 1000% where they take their hard work in sport too seriously and thus take themselves too seriously. It's a balance. You'd be surprised how easy professional athletes even will go certain days. They make their easy super easy. A lot of athletes I know who've really "made it" really could benefit from a pure stage green transition from orange where their productivity and work ethic suffers a bit but in backing off they really connect with something deeper Be detached to your extraordinary hard work.

@Bluebird This is awesome man. Going to shoot you a message on questions about specifics about this. Also, check out Martin Ball's newish book: Entheogenic Liberation I haven't read it but I know a lot of it is on nondual energetic therapy and with the way he uses 5-MeO even for deep therapy work (when he did do it -he's retired now). I think you can use psychedelics with body work therapy like psychologists such as Wilhelm Reich. I remember hearing one time from Shinzen Young in a YouTube video that there are 3 fundamental levels of the subconscious: Internal Talk - This is the most surface level which is what most psychotherapy is geared towards like DBT/CBT and such. How you talk to yourself, what's that inner narrator saying, etc. Imagery - This is the 2nd deepest level of the subconscious where people like Freud and Jung come in with dreamwork, archetypes, shadow work, etc. The Body - The deepest level. This is where Wilhelm Reich comes in and even Martin Ball and a lot of transpersonal psychologists like Stan Grof. Also, that "Shamanic Breathing" video was all transpersonal psychology. Man if you listen to the stories Martin Ball has on say some other YouTube videos outside of the interview he did with @Leo Gura, you're going to get some amazing perspectives about how much trauma, energy, and unconscious baggage we hold in ourselves "physically".

I'm personally taking a break from my sport right now. Just burnt out and no real desire or longing to compete at the moment. I, like @Sahil Pandit (btw you got 4:30 no problem), am a runner from 800m to MUT Running (Mountain, Ultra, Trail). When I'm training I'm at it 7 days a week sometimes twice a day depending on where I'm at in my training cycle with strength training a little bit everyday and then very focused strength work 2-3 times a week. It really depends on what you mean by "workout". If you're an athlete you're training every single day. There's no real way around that. However, some days are more intense than others. That's all training is if you want to see it through a scientific lens: Stress + Rest = Growth Where it becomes more grey though and more complicated is when you've adapted to enough training that you can say do a really hard session one day and then stress other "systems" say the next day or even in another session later in the day and work on different things. For example if you're a runner like Sahil and I, you can do say a really hard anaerobic or lactate threshold workout followed by some intense power lifting to increase testosterone and increase recovery and wake up the nervous system one day and then the next day go for an easy effort 20 mile run where you're not necessarily pushing yourself much per say but you're training more of a slower cook process in developing your aerobic engine which can still tax you but in a different way. - So that's just a long way of say... it depends LOL

This is actually what I'm more interested in for using psychedelics. I see SO much potential here for this EXACT work and even work for connecting more to deep intuition. So glad to see someone posting on this. I feel like using psychedelics for this is maybe even more important for powerfully releasing a lot of baggage before you get into serious nondual work as modern egos now, especially in the west, are so rotten, traumatized, fragmented, dysfunctional that they can't even effectively do the deepest enlightenment work possible because they're so traumatized in some way or another and can't really develop real authentic compassion, love, and empathy and end projections, bitterness, shame, judging, anger, etc.

LIFE PURPOSE COURSE. How are you still asking LEO this question? Contemplate what you want out of life, read biographies, realize as far as you know that this life is temporary (I’m not going to go into nondual elitism mode and be a snob of like ‘there’s no such thing as death’ because that doesn’t help you nor does that get you to understand anything). What do you want to give to this world? Also, 1/2 a million dollars isn’t as much as you think. If you have a rotten foundation in your relationship to money, you can easily piss that money away quickly. If people like Mike Tyson and Johnny Depp can blow $100,000,000 MORE THAN ONCE, that says something about how it doesn’t matter how much you’ll earn, the chimp in you will still find a way to piss it all away. $500k is not enough to be like “I’m set.” You getting a huge infusion of cash really doesn’t fix anything actually. It may in the short term at best if you haven’t developed any systems or worse, you haven’t developed yourself (to become a high value provider).

Stave Orange reacting to the implications of Gödel Incompleteness Theorem and of Quantim Mechanics. @Leo Gura

Don't bring debates on here. If you want to argue please do so elsewhere. Sharing ideas, insights, multiple perspectives isn't the same as feeling like you need to debate and defend position ideologically. As someone whose lived with a dad whose very much into political science and "philosophy" and treats debating like "a UFC sport" I can tell you that it's a waste of time and just becomes pure dogma. You don't need to go out and argue with people.

What do you want? Short answer: no. You don’t NEED to. The question here is if you want to.

Read the monk memoir on the booklist in the consciousness and enlightenment section. I think this is a good idea for you but also understand that this action needs to be fueled by a positive motivation. That doesn’t mean there won’t be fear but you “yearn for God” and are willing to surrender everything. @ajasatya said it best about the ego relenting at the end of his post. Don’t do this for escapism and also build momentum into this. Also, being a monk doesn’t necessarily mean go live in a monastery. It may mean that but you can be in Zen for example where you can actually leave the monastery eventually to do your own thing. Or you live in a cave and take the vows of say a Tantrik yogi/monk who may or may not have a guru and pursue hardcore full enlightenment until you have been permeated by God in your psyche, actions, and body and then return to the world and start say a healthy spiritual community like that I’d say Sat Yoga in Costa Rica run by Shunyamurti that has a wisdom school, an ashram, runs retreats, etc. which demands enlightened leadership (which does take money) or you may decide to not return to the material world and live in a hut like Zen Master and famous poet Ryōkan. Or you may have a tiny ashram somewhere.

And all this time I thought I was coming off as an asshole

In the concentration meditation at the end where you concentrate and “look through” sahashara, it says in the book to raise your eyeballs up and then concentrate on the point between your eyebrows. I find this helps me have a spot to concentrate on because otherwise, I’m just kinda guessing for that spot. Is it normal to hold your eyes in the position?

Read Jung and some solid psychoanalysts. Integrallife.com also has some stuff on dreamwork too. Try that nootropic Leo suggested btw that increases dream clarity as well.

I also don’t have my car anymore since a guy t-boned my car (and of course Geico dropped my claim all because he didn’t answer his phone) and buses up to those free Dhamma Vipassana Centers are like $200 round trip via Greyhound buses. I also get yelled at for doing anything that involves taking a break from the stresses of life because “I don’t deserve it.”

Everything you believe or “know” about enlightenment, so long as you’ve never “experienced it”, is bullshit

Then you’re not going to build self-esteem. It’s that simple. If you wanna repeat affirmations and lie to yourself and create a fassade of self-esteem, go right ahead. Real self-esteem is built out in the world, not by you living in a fantasy bubble visualizing and brainwashing yourself more and lying to yourself. I know this through experience. There is no shortcut to this stuff. Self esteem exercises through things like journaling and stuff are support systems that enhance personal growth as like a little boost to supplement the work you do out in the world. Stop looking for shortcuts. They are a waste of time. Trust me on this. I also agree with @Joseph Maynor however, depending where you are, you’ll need to do some real healthy ego work. Truth is the answer to all your depressing problems in life at the end of the day but that doesn’t just necessarily mean sitting on a cushion all day doing enlightenment work. That also entails being honest ALL THE TIME and never letting up. It entails taking action and doing the emotionally difficult thing and persisting through that. It may mean taking psychedelics and having a horrifying trip and see all the trauama and suffering you’ve been projecting and then integrating all of that through say shadow work and dream work. It entails being more compassionate and loving and stop being a selfish bastard by taking your problems so seriously and personally.

You operate in this illusion. Take ownership. Participate. This selfish oriented “my vote doesn’t matter” or “it’s all fixed” mentality shows an utter LACK of consciousness. Christ didn’t sit passively on the sideline. Gandhi didn’t say “ah what’s the point.” No there is no moral obligation. However, it does show show self absorbtion and ego if you don’t. You’re in no position to complain about and judge those on the Spiral Dynamics model and all the shenanigans that are going on if you just sit on your ass. Get out and vote.