kieranperez

They're my values. Not yours. They mean different things to me. There's nuance. If they mean the same TO YOU, awesome.

This was Shinzen Young’s teacher and one of the biggest forces for bringing Buddhism to the west and true enlightened zen master. You can be as enlightened as it gets and still have a shadow and A LOT of other work to do.

Go to a rave here in the SF Bay Area.

I really couldn't put it much better than that. I do have a similar issue to you@PhilGR. I totally get it. All these grand exciting goals for enlightenment, discovering the truth, etc. and wanting to share it with others since they too are also asleep... Don't forget though... YOU TOO ARE ASLEEP. So from there, be more concerned about YOU getting to the absolute truth. Don't worry about them in terms of sharing these insights. If they're not open, they're not open and you being a newb in this work (as am I so I don't say that as a put-down) have no real authority but more importantly, the embodiment of these truths to really do much convincing. This going around and talking about all these "insights" right now for you is just going to hurt you and is just huge a distraction. Don't conceptualize this stuff that much. You have your motive, great! Now get to work. Also, understand that these insights you're sharing aren't genuine. They may sound true or whatever but you have to get first that you don't actually know if it's true and also what's actually true. Also, I find talking about this stuff with other people causes a decay in my own integrity because of the fact that when I share these "insights" they're still not genuine so really it's just me bullshitting other people and also myself. Listen to what @aurum said though. You're going to function A LOT better if you take that advice and you're actually going to see how that relates to becoming a Spiral Dynamics wizard down the road because you'll have the ability to communicate to people at other stages.

What a lot of people with low and crippling self-esteem that go into spiritual practice don’t understand is that those are 2 different endeavors. You can be really enlightened but that really is just your consciousness of absolute truth. Have you noticed that a lot of people go into spirituality from a place of deficiency? These people with crippling emotional issues (depression, low self-esteem, crippling life issues, etc.) are operating from a place of fear. This is entirely why for example Ken Wilber has 3 different lines of development: Waking Up (enlightenment) Growing Up (personal development) Cleaning Up (“emotional work”) You can be enlightened and still have a lot of gross and subtle addictions. Enlightenment work is not work you use to escape your problems. That will actually only entrench your problems more. My advice for you would be to a tick with your meditation and or yoga practice but really hammer home on personal development and self esteem work. Why? Because you could do enlightenment work for the next 15 years and still not see results or get any experiences. Work on the character through which you operate the relative world in.

Simply put, this entire endeavor of trying to turn my life around at any level seems impossible. I’ve seen @Leo Gura‘s video titled “How to Stop Being a Victim Part 2” for those that are gonna suggest it. I’ve tried the exercise at the end multiple times and I keep giving logical answers to all of them. When I look deeper to try and see I end up in tears of frustration and anger. I realize logically that these emotional reactions are what’s keeping me self deceived but when I realize that I get even more upset to the point of utter emotional meltdown. I keep buying books and courses I don’t finish (including life purpose course), I have extremely low self esteem (self respect and self efficacy), I have no emotional mastery whatsoever, I struggle with chronic anger, bitterness, depression, etc. Fuck I can’t even sleep at night anymore. I can’t sleep because I know I don’t have my life handled. People keep telling me “oh you’re 23 you have time.” I can’t even talk to girls anymore because I’m so embarassed and ashamed of what I have to offer. I live at home with the most dogmatic rationalist that operates under the most secular moralistic attitude who I have no relationship with and is pushing me to work for him and get a real estate license but I know that’s a dead end. I just don’t know what to do. I can’t afford financially a place to really live, I have no self esteem or emotional stability to really pursue my life purpose and start a business, etc. I know I’m the only obstacle and that other people or circumstances aren’t necessarily the main issues that needs to be conquered but this just feels like so fucking much it’s impossible. I’m terrified because I know if things go the way they’re going I’m going to most likely end up suicidal or something because I don’t trust that I can fucking do anything. I can’t even seem to make choices anymore. I’m having constant emotional meltdowns and I can’t get help with therapy because my dad thinks I just need to be told to man up and get to work and become more successful so I can afford to put food in my mouth. I try doing things like affirmations, visualization, etc. but the more I do it I just end up in tears because I know I’m just horse shitting myself. Even if I goes fine, THEN WHAT? What do I do after? Start a business with no emotional stability or any real psychological strength or resourcefulness? I also live in the most exspensive city in the USA to live in and I can’t afford the car I have now either. I constantly am leaving the city (San Francisco) and head to nature just to be nature and drive to TRY to calm down and think clearly for once (often unsuccessful because I know I’m wasting more time). I almost feel like going back on one of my old antidepressants just to cope but even when I was taking those nothing was any different..

I really wouldn't mix enlightenment work with this. Enlightened or not, you operate through a relative world (the dual within the non-dual). Most people are just not aware. However, I would really put enlightenment work on the back of your mind for work to be handled later on in life. @moon777light I'm exactly where you are. Really get low self-esteem handled. I'm also currently reading through Branden's 6 Pillars of Self-Esteem. I can attest to the importance of needing to get this handled because my life won't get turned around until I get my low self-esteem handled. You can't make true significant life changes, or in my case, any life change for that matter, if you're stuck as a victim and you can't keep integrity with yourself, you don't believe in your own commitments and that you have the resolve to turn your life around. Affirmations, visualizations, etc. is all stuff that are more icing to the cake that is mostly made up of at least decent self-esteem (self-respect and self-efficacy). Otherwise, you know it's just mantras that hold no truth or validity to them. Get this handled and self-actualization and enlightenment work will go so much better as it will allow you to pursue these things without sabotaging yourself in your efforts. This is a lesson I'm learning late unfortunately and I'm really paying the price for it. I hope you get this handled

I thought the headline of this title was just be cheeky... That’s unconditional love right there.. you can tell everybody in the crowd doesn’t get what he’s saying at all, especially when he said “he needs love.”

So obviously spiral dynamics isn’t a map that truly deals with nonduality or enlightenment. I think it’s clear that there’s correlation but going back hundreds of years ago, it’s pretty safe to say Stage Orange didn’t even exist but there were still spiritual masters that may have been mostly blue or purple or even red (depending on the person, their shadow, era in history, and culture, and I’m sure many other factors). I’m curious though on possible examples of enlightened people at Stage Yellow. I have a hard time wrapping my head around this considering a. I’ve yet to have a real awakening experience, and b. It seems like too much conceptualism for an enlightened person to spend much time in... I say that lightly though. Given that there seems to be degrees on the nondual path I don’t want to make such bold claims like that. So I take that with a grain of salt. Thoughts on this? Possible examples?

Make this as detailed or conscise as you want. I find this actually really fascinating. I love knowing and understanding why people start endeavors in the beginning. I feel like for a lot of us, especially in the west, we don’t grow up learning things like meditation. For a lot of us, myself included, we get into meditation as a result of suffering in our lives and then we discover this infinite gold mine. So I would just like to know why you started. Not really so much “the how” (how you found it), although feel free to include that I’m curious on what your first initial motive was. Was it just suffering? Did you already know about it and wanted to give it a shot? My why: I got into meditation because I was suffering so much from being suicidal. I remember one day in my junior or senior year in high school I had a school psychologist who was from vietnam and practiced Buddhism there and then in China. I remember I was seeing him for the first time one day during school hours and I was just so angry and depressed and he guided me through such a basic body scan and mindfulness meditation of being aware. I laugh a little about it now because I remember him describing mindfulness with noting and labeling on the fan that was in the room and hearing for what it was and not having a clue of what he meant. By the end of each sit corn 5 minutes I couldn’t believe the calm I felt. I had NEVER felt that in my life. Time went on though and quickly forgot about it. Later on, I was in a hospitalization program at UCSF for DBT (dialectal behavioral therapy) immerision. We started at 8am sharp and we did a mindfulness meditation for the first 15 minutes everyday. I was so depressed and lost in my mind and so angry I didn’t know what to do. I was on 6 medications p/day and nothing was working. I knew though, that I looked forward to those first 15 minutes everyday. I got more interested after this program. The effects of meditation hadn’t been adding up and spilling into most of my day. I was still just so fucking upset and angry all the time and dealing with a toxic and dysfunctional family that was falling apart. I would wake up to screaming in the house, my mom with disassociative identity disorder had been tearing our family apart and my dad not handling things well at all alongside my own neuroses had motivated me to try and escape. Then, the day I became directly aware of the power this thing called meditation really is came... I was sitting on my bed listening to a 26 minute guided meditation lead by San Harris. This was a REALLY long time for me. The meditation became deeper as I followed along. Then, near the end, he gave the instructions of finding the thing that I call “I”. I remember not being able to grab hold of anything. I then realized how arbitrary this all is. I realized just how much I don’t know. I realized, I don’t have a fucking clue about who I am. My mind was fucked... and I loved it.

I had my first astral projection the other week and it was by total accident when I was going to bed. Had no idea what it was until I looked it up and talked to @Sahil Pandit.

Give me one episode where Leo goes around claiming he’s enlightened... and as far as threatening business - do you realize he released a life purpose that is all about finding ones calling in the context of career and business? Lololol

Read Byron Katie's book, "Loving What Is" and Brad Blanton's "Radical Honesty". Also, check Leo's 2-part video series on Moralizing.

@cirkussmile that is still just a claim. I'm glad you were able to find peace and happiness by learning meditation and sticking to it. However, that isn't a brute fact. Nobody goes into meditation or any new endeavor TRULY knowing what they're in for. Glad you got results though.

Key Question: If you went back to your "prior self" (I say that only for illustrative purposes. Not making metaphysical claims or assumptions) to the time when you first sat down to meditate and you visualized yourself being back in that time at that moment, what exactly were you looking for? You were motivated by something because you wouldn't be sitting there if you weren't motivated to move towards or away from something. Did somebody tell you something about meditation that sounded like it would be worth doing? What was that?

This isn't about asserting opinions on psychedelics and your opinions on how to find peace and happiness. The topic is on why you started meditating.

Derive truth for yourself. An answer you read on here means nothing. example: there is no self im guessing you didn’t become a Buddha from reading that.

He just came out with his book “Opportunity” which is gold. Take “Marketing Step-by-Step”. It’s $1000 for the course and well worth it. I had a $1000 in my savings that I took out for that course and it was well worth it if you work the course. Don’t get lost in theory though. You can have an MBA and suck in business. Watch Leo’s video on the pitfalls and traps when starting a business.

Learn marketing.

Why did you pursue spirituality in the beginning? What were you motivated by? We’re not really born and end up motivated by some higher sense drive to pursue truth if only it worked that way. What did that mean for you at the time? No one really starts after all understanding what an ego REALLY is outside of the conceptual idea we have. What did you think pursuing meditation in the beginning would get you? What were you feeling that wasn’t happiness? Anger? Deep depression? Anxiety? Panic attacks? Hollowness from excess materialism? Why did you want to pursue self-improvement? What were motivated to “become” (I’m talking about back then, not now)? Was something going on or just something that wasn’t coming together in life that made you want to pursue meditation and self improvement?

If you had to take yourself back to when you first got started, what were you looking for? A way to find peace in all the nonsense that’s brought into a dysfunctional household (I can relate to that) and to alleviate a lot of the suffering that toxicity can bring? Hope your practice has been coming together!

Why? Not objecting at all. I’m curious about why you wanted that. What did you think that would get you? What did you want from being more present?

When you see and get off the wheel of samsara and nirvana as one thing.

So right now I’m learning marketing through Eben Pagan’s online course “Marketing Step by Step”. For starters, it’s actually a great course. It’s very disillusioning on what marketing is but Eben Pagan seems to put a lot of honest effort of saying basically ‘hey, this is a powerful tool/skill you have at your disposal. Use this responsibly.’ So just wanted to give him a good plug on a good course. As I’m going through this course though and also as someone whose new to actually learning what marketing is, and especially when I learn about what effective and successful marketing is and how it works, I’m honestly just astonished at @Leo Gura has been able to do with all this here. Not even in the sense of not abusing this very acquirable skill that we call marketing, but the fact that this guy has been able to create a following of on YouTube alone 3/4 of a million subs talking honestly about topics such as enlightenment and all this sort of stuff that threatens one’s sense of self and beliefs and still market that effectively is really impressive but also inspiring. Not inspiring in some glorifying moral sense but inspiring because it shows me that I don’t need to sell out if I actually learn what real marketing is and that I can still be successful and do honest yet effective marketing.

@MsNobody yes. I lived in Lucas Valley for 11 years and I’m back in SF now unfortunately. I lived 2 miles down the road from lead singer of Metallica and 3 miles down the road from Skywalker ranch in Lucas Valley where Joseph Campbell often stayed. Also, Jack Kornfield is in West Marin at Spirit Rock. Vedanta Society is in Olema in Point Reyes. SF Zen Center has a Center in Muir Beach. 420 also started at San Rafael high school and Robin Williams went to Redwood High School. Theres a lot in Marin that people wouldn’t think of. Problem with Marin as with all of the Bay Area is just how hard it is to even find a place to live. The other is being able to afford to live here. Especially Marin.