kieranperez

“The best way to successfully not get a mentor is by asking someone to be your mentor.” - Ryan Holiday

You’re using your friend as a smoke screen. Sure, I know lead computer scientists that work at Google that are also very articulate, good with girls, etc. and don’t talk like borderline autistic left brained people but people like that tend to be rare. Being a good mathematician or scientist has nothing to do with how emotionally grounded you are. Whether some of this people are or aren’t are independent issues. There is no such thing as a standard measure of anything because all of that is relative. Just like there is no such thing as a standard human being. IQ is but one test of one type of intellect. Most people don’t have the kinesthetic intelligence I do or most (sub) elite athletes and you better get for the sake of your argument that kinesthetic intelligence is a form of intellect. You can have someone with super high IQ from some meaningless test and have no inflect on how to interact with other human beings. Why? Because he just knows really wel how to be a cold hard computing robot. That person may not have any creative intelligence (which most of them actually don’t). I live in the heart of San Francisco and most people that you argue and seem are truly intelligent are fucking wage slaves because they don’t think for themselves, have any creativ ideas on how to impact the world with their own vision, have their own vision, etc. they just work here at Twitter HQ blocks from me, or Salesforce, or if they’re in an ambitious visionary mood, work for a small startup that probably will fail due to their lack of creative input. IQ doesn’t change the world nor does it serve as any standard of inteligence as a whole.

I want preface though: I do want to impact the world. I don’t want to be some uneducated person but is self realized as fuck. That’s why I’m so inspired by that becoming a sage video. It’s a balance and union of both.

I will admit, I was really excited but also nervous and had little red flag go up in my first email from Shunyamurti after I described my situation and also my financial and he suggested I sell my car, save up, and come down. Here’s my own inner conflict going on with all this: I want to go fully into enlightenment work because I feel like it’s thats call to adventure that I’ve been denying and putting off in terms of a radical turning onwards and going all in. Also because I am struggling to work on my life purpose here at home because my dad is pressuring me to go into real estate, work under him and be his wage slave, making me give up personal development and spiritual practice (he’s a JP and Sam Harris fanatic) and ridicules me every time I’m honest with him (I’m trying to stop lying and be honest with my intentions and desires) about how I want to start a business and that he’s only going to let me work under him if I really want to go into real estate and help him. And I can’t just say “fuck this I’m out” because he holds the purse strings. I live in San Francisco. There’s no way in hell I can find a place here, much less find one any time soon. If you’re not making 6 figures or your parents are paying your rent while you work for some startup or something, forget it and I got nowhere to go or friends I can stay with. I really want to pursue my life purpose but what if it does entail that I have to go fully inward and withdraw from society (like in the monk memoir on the booklist - great book btw)? That’s something I REALLY want in my life regardless of how png it takes however there’s this conflict inside where it’s like ‘I don’t want to start this life mission or purpose only to have give it up to go inward after I’ve already started building it.’ Plus he’s my dad. I don’t want to just be this sneaky son of a bitch he’s helped for a long time (very dysfuntionally and has caused a lot of harm) and I say I’m going to help in his business and sneakily work on my life purpose only to pop in and leave him. I want to do my thing but I don’t want to be an asshole. In the end though, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be a simple pretty answer or solution to this.

Holy fuck... I get it now. This whole being cornered and all of this to escape the maze and stop being a slave to society, my current minimum wage job, and to my own ego all in order to help the world... Holy fuck I’ve been so childish and naive. THIS is slavery to the maze... I thought I understood before... Now I get it... I just realized how important strategic thinking, planning, and intent REALLY is.

Yeah that’s what I’m trying to balance. I definitely don’t want to live there permanently. My whole plan was to go then come back but the whole problem with that is that is this path is so unpredictable. There’s no guarantee that it will I even get enlightenment in life, much less have a seventh predictable estimate of time. Its hard because enlightenment is just an absolute central piece to my life purpose. I want to go all out with it but at the same time I don’t want to corner myself. Even then though, we have all these examples of people who lived in ashrams and did all this stuff in the 60s and 70s and came back (like the hero’s journey) so it’s like ‘well, these guys did it and went all gung-ho.’

For what?...

I'm currently taking the self-authoring program right now which only costs $29.99. Right now I feel like I'm at a point of a real potential crisis right now at 23 years old. I'm stuck at a part-time job not able to get more hours with no work skills to get a better job outside of minimum wage, have car insurance that's so expensive I can't afford from accidents (about $500 p/month) (and my car is t-boned right now and I can't afford to pay for repairs... even though I didn't cause the accident but my insurance dropped my claim), I haven't gotten laid for exactly a year now even though I'm a good looking dude I'm just too ashamed about how little I have to offer and can't stand lying a bit where I'm at in life, my only way to a better chance in income is to work under my Dad who has literally said I need to sacrifice "all this self-help nonsense and Indian woo-woo spiritual stuff" and at the same time doesn't even want me there nor at the home he provides for me meanwhile he and I have to share a bed since he is recently divorced to my mom, my little brother is thriving in high school and socially and is seen as the one who has his act together, I'm pressured to go out and drink and smoke weed and "be normal", I have no friends at this point, and I wake up everyday knowing it won't be different than the last and struggle to sleep at night knowing tomorrow will be the same, crying myself to sleep knowing I will likely never know who/what I am, what life is, what all this is, and never escape the life of being the very sheep I never ever thought I'd ever be. I got this affordable Self-Authoring program by Jordan Peterson because it's something I think Stage Blue has something to bring to the table which is orderliness and a sense of getting one's life in check, clearing up stuff that happened in the past, and setting out a better future and picking myself up by my bootstraps in a healthy, non-neurotic way. Though I totally agree with people like @Leo Gura at the blunders of Jordan Peterson and people similar like Sam Harris (I would know... I was one of the fanatics and I live with 2 people that are even greater fanatics of them than I am), I do see a part of Peterson that encourages visionary thinking and get people to want see their life as a limited time to be a hero in their own life, particularly for men (I think he has a rather odd and peculiar stance whenever I hear him talk about "the purpose of a woman's life" and all that stuff. Don't know, don't want to comment). I think he provides a practical and orderly way of helping someone really get their life in check in such away that doesn't overwhelm the individual who may be in a really deep mental and emotional hole like myself. I personally find this valuable because I right now am noticing my desire to get out of Stage Orange and am really being pulled towards Stage Green. However, I know a lot of people who are in Stage Green (shoutout to living in San Francisco) but came into it from a place of deficiency and lack in the things they didn't get when they were in Stage Orange and the value system that characterizes that stage, e.g. a guy who tries being good with girls but never succeeded and felt worthless and moves into Green as a reaction from his lack of success in that domain and now uses Green to feel that community and "oneness" to makeup for what he didn't get in Orange. I'm noticing this right now and am having a very hard dilemma because I can tell my values are naturally evolving into Green but at the same time I haven't integrated parts of Orange and even Blue that can lead to a more healthy "use" of Stage Green. For instance, I have this huge pull to just buy a backpacking backpack and just hitchhike out of here or something like that and "see the world" but I know what this trap is, in yet this pisses me off because I want out of San Francisco, the bullshit life I'm in, to be in quiet, go within myself, camp and see and be in nature, meditate under the stars and get out of this fucking city, have more authentic relationships with "Green people" as I've been noticing I've really been wanting that, etc. Meanwhile my dad really does need help with his business but unwilling to accept me with the passions and drives that I have and if I do the business (which I hate, have no passion in, serves no one, etc.). In the case that you put together this rambling successfully (wouldn't imagine so as I'm still very emotional right now over what to do with my situation), what I think Jordan Peterson has to offer to the table in terms of personal evolution is how to make healthy use and integration of Stage Blue and even Orange and more importantly, help apathetic men/millennials like myself who grew up both pretty well off financially both also very poor in terms of their own mental and emotional wellbeing (you can grow up privileged and still battle with deep depression, being suicidal, etc. which was pretty much me) face the world and make the tough decisions that come with life. Though you can definitively see a lot of shadow (which is ironic because he's often seen as having a deep understanding of Carl Jung and the shadow/disowned self) elements and even blatantly clear contradictions in Peterson, when I hear him talk in terms of helping people get themselves together I really see a lot of positivity and good in what he does on that front. I think if you have a holistic enough of a healthy proper understanding of Spiral Dynamics, you can see where he fits in. He has his delusions but unless you're starting to reach the end of Yellow or are already into Turquoise (which most people on here clearly aren't... meaning, you probably aren't... if you don't bullshit yourself), we/you probably do as well.

@Misagh checkout Leo’s videos on quantum mechanics

Man this is fascinating as it seems so paradoxical and even counter to what we have talked about with Spiral Dynamics yet both seem correct. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check this out: https://grahamhancock.com/murtis3/ along with Shunaymurti’s interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump (amazing epispde and so insightful). This guy seems like a true sage that wasn’t perhaps that spiritually gifted but worked his ass off to make it happen. What this man has created in his community is honestly inspiring and only expands my vision.

I was listening to this episode below with Shunyamurti on Buddha at the Gas Pump and at 30 minutes in Shunyamurti talks about why he feels the commitment to Yamas in Niyamas is so critical in his ashram, SAT Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. After that though Rick brings up an interesting question regarding development on the spiritual path and the cultivation of the Yamas and Niyamas, asking whether they grow sequentially or simultaneously. Shunyamurti very replies, and I'm paraphrasing, 'most people start in the same place. Some people I've found really benefit from practices like pranayama to work out a lot of anxiety and tension that they hold in their body however there are also plenty of people who really don't benefit much from pranayama and are fine enough to go deep into deep modes of consciousness without it. It's a very individual thing. However, most people need to start by just sitting down, dealing with the pain and anxiety in the mind and body and then grow from there.' This to me really struck me because I really tie this a lot to what @Leo Gura has been saying of studying diverse perspectives in nondual practice and also explains why you have people like phenomenon like Peter Ralston who have just such a bare bones practice of contemplating and don't need all the introductory sort of stuff like meditation, emotional work, etc. I remember reading his most recent book that came out at the end of June this year where it's a series of dialogues Ralston has with students and answering their questions. One of the questions in there asked why he doesn't talk about meditation and what not and he said it's basically a distraction from getting what you are. I think that advice in the end really isn't that well thought out because people like Ralston and a lot of these deeply enlightened people don't appreciate that they are one of the very very very VERY few that are able to go past a lot of newbie "trials" and "phases" and go for the prize right from the get-go (though I don't want to make it seem like they didn't have to work hard for it). I also think this is an important take because it shows that you need to be active in your role in conscious development if you're doing this all mostly solo. If you don't have a guru, swami, zen master you see or something that's getting an outside view of what you're doing wrong, struggling with, etc. you need to play an active role by reading many many many books, taking in different sources, etc. mostly just to find what works for you based on where you're at in life, your hinderances, neurotic tendencies, trauma, what you're strong at, what you're weak at, etc. NOT just to fill your head with an enormous mental archive of cute quotes and teachings from sages of the past and what not.

Take the life purpose course.

Now that I don’t feel like throwing up anymore and wanting to set fire to my local Safeway and other grocery outlets after watching these factory farming videos... I think (self) honesty and awareness can be the big accelerators in moving up the spiral dynamics stages. What I’ve noticed lately is the increasing of my own awareness gets me more in touch with my current motives. As a result, this keeps the conditioned self at bay and also allows me to be more in touch with the motives and values I’m authentically towards. I think the biggest trap in staying stuck in a stage is to anchor yourself and lose touch with the awareness that got you to that newer level of development in the first place. I literally picture awareness and honesty to be like the lever that open the floodgates to new possibilities of evolution of concsuouness, ego is transformation (and of course transcendence), maturity, and higher motives & values.

Watch videos on factory farming and then go to your fridge (unless your vegan or vegetarian). Watch what real selfishness looks like and how likely it is that you fund it (not going on some idealogical rampage against people who eat meat).

Beginners know nothing. And that’s the part they overlook the most. And a big key to the whole prize is grasping the depth of how much you don’t know. Assume you will always be a newbie and that it will never end regardless of how long you’ve been on the path or level of attainments in your own life. Never assume you have it. Good luck.

You don’t appreciate how some minds have been conditioned and fragmented and the challenges some people might go through to not complicate what’s absolutely so. For instance, if you’re suicidal, extremely depressed, have ADHD, or have an illness like schizophrenia, you’re gonna have a much harder time than some in sitting down on the cushion and being able to see through the illusions that you create and all your projections and what not. Much less make the distinction that you are the one creating them. This is why compassion is such a stressed component post-awakening because it’s easy to get trapped in seeing how obvious the truth of the matter is after the fact. Being grounded in compassion is important for people who are more advanced because it’s easy to take for granted how smoother it was for you than it is for other people who either beginning, still on the path, or the extraordinary amount of people who never get it. And no. Most things can’t be “gotten” by just staring at them. The reality is that a lot of people need to go through a long aruduous process. Hell, even @Leo Gurawould probably the first to tell you. If you think you can grasp all of reality by just staring at a wall, chances are that won’t happen. Sure, it can but that doesn’t mean that it will.

Does that include stuff that you have yet to talk about? Want to make sure I'm not getting into airy fairy thinking of what you mean by that.

What enlightened people feel like doing when they talk to other people.

@Leo Gura I actually think yoga as a whole system with all it's different facets and schools of it is what makes it such a genius way of going about nonduality. I mean from body practices, visualization, meditation and all the different of it to paths of learning, selfless service, action, etc. it's such a broad path that encompasses all these different ways of cultivating spiritual development it's crazy in it's versatility.

Good tips and advice on using psychedelics for greater creativity, creative ideas, getting in deep touch with intuition, etc.? Recommendations of psychedelics for this purpose that isn’t nonduality related?

Elaborate

People in Silicon Valley do a lot of Adderall and stuff like that. Lot of stimulants here (I live in San Francisco in the Bay Area). No problem

Practice practice practice

Look at this dudes channel LOL half his videos are trolling Leo

Yes! I’m so glad you read it ❤️