Arthur

Here are my two cents on your questions: 1. The US market has been the strongest historically (reserve currency status, free market etc.), but some allocation in emerging markets is a good approach. I would go majority on the US and maybe 20% emerging. 2. It has been proven that if you want to maximize profit, the passive investing approach outperforms active in the long run. In other words, set and forget your funds in an all-market ETF. 3 & 4. 80% savings is a very high number, remember that investing will not make you rich. It will sponsor your retirement and it will make you wealthy, but only in your 50s and 60s. Therefore there is no reason to be over-excited right now and compromise on enjoying your life with the means you have. Also, if your goal is to become rich, investment in yourself and a business will go much further than stocks. 5. Focus more on spirituality, allocate less of your funds for investing, and make a rule that whatever you put in can only be taken out in retirement. Although it is exciting when you first get into it and see the numbers grow, investing has a long time horizon.

I suggest looking up Ben Filex on YouTube. He has a great channel and a podcast that is all about smart decision-making and investing based on models and principles, rather than fad and FOMO. You can start with his older videos. Unlike other technical analysts, he does claim that he can beat the market or that he has a crystal ball that will make you rich. He is investing in productive assets, not gold or crypto, but global market ETFs, with the addition of a couple of uncorrelated risk ETFs. I copied his "Model Portfolio" and it has been working well for me over the years.

This is an interesting video, he is knowledgeable about marketing, branding and online business (solid Orange). Basically, he is saying you have to become a content creator. The problem with that is that if you haven't developed any skill, don't have any wisdom to share, or are not particularly artistic, the content you create is very shallow and surface-level. At that point, you are doing it for monetary gains, social validation and to build your ego as a "teacher" and a "value provider". The truth is, that society will reward you for any content you put out, but that doesn't mean you want to go down a low-consciousness path. In my opinion, a good use of those content platforms is to supplement a life purpose that is outside of the platform. For example, you master a skill in a specific domain after putting in 10,000 hours and then open a YouTube channel to educate people on the wisdom you have gained. He did touch on that in the video, but he seems more focused on the content and personal brand, which I think is secondary. First, have something valuable to share, then focus on the mechanics of being a content creator.

I don't think you have to worry too much about the markets in the long term. I agree that a recession is coming, but it was in the making way before Trump got elected. It is brought about by years of cheap credit, high debt, demographic changes and lack of productivity. Don't listen too much to the doomers on YouTube and be responsible with your finances.

You can always focus on your life purpose while working a regular job in the meantime. For example, you could build a health and fitness website after hours. For $$$ though, I would recommend doing a 2-year diploma or apprenticeship program and getting into niche jobs in trades, healthcare or government (those sectors are strong in Canada). The competition pool for software and white-collar jobs is too large, especially with immigration, compared to specialized and practical high-skilled jobs. In your place, I would minimize my spending (downsize if possible), keep most of my net worth in ETFs, and finish a 2-year diploma in healthcare. If you have the patience to sit through a degree, you can look into Kinesiology or Physiotherapy, which will combine your passion for exercising and a healthy lifestyle.

Dear Actualizers, I would like to share some of the insights I got while having my first experience of the psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT. (Apologise for badly written English) I did not experience a breakthrough, physical death or the Absolute. You won’t find information on those topics here. However, I still got some interesting insights about reality. I won’t post my dosages, since every person’s dose will vary with the purity of the substance, method of administration and body tolerance. Start small and increment the doses with consecutive trips. I’ve done 3 trips so far. Each one presented me with a different insight. Before the peak After about 5 to 10 minutes of taking the substance (not when smoking), the first affects started to occur. Heart rate increased, slight shivering, nausea, slight burning sensation in the chest and feeling of tension in the forehead. These might sound terrible, but they were not that bad and I was just able to relax into it despite discomfort. The visual field became kind of fuzzy as well, everything was still there, but it felt like looking into a curved mirror. My motor functions were fine - I could walk and grab things fine. But in general I had a slight buzz, similar to when you have maybe a beer or two. Peak Insights After about 15-20 minutes, all previously mentioned feelings completely faded away and I entered incredible state of consciousness. My awareness got multiplied by 1000, like I’ve been meditating since birth. No other non-psychedelic substance ever came close to this. It’s really indescribable state that needs to be experienced. In that state, I got hit by three facets of reality: 1. First trip showed me that everything we experience is there because of Love. I came to the trip expecting something massive, something huge and scary, but it was none of that. It was a very gentle, very personal and warm feeling of Love. Not romantic love or love of you family, it was much a deeper feeling - Love for reality. This love was so strong, that it allowed Everything to exist. You can do anything to it, stab it, cut it, spit on it, and it will still love you. You can manipulate, delude yourself, tell lies and it didn’t matter. This love doesn’t judge, doesn’t moralize and doesn’t separate. Honestly It felt like I got caught with my pants down, and this love was looking my whole life saying “its ok”… I cried my ass out for a good 10 minutes. I realized that me, and everybody else, forgot this feeling of Love. This Love was manifesting itself in every perception. I looked at a bucket next to me and busted into tears. Everybody forgot that they are here to experience Anything they want. I thought to myself “wow, how beautiful this reality is compared to non-existence”. I knew that I will forget this experience, and that everybody forgot how magical, beautiful and Loving reality is. 2. Second trip showed me the Omnipresence of perception. For this one, I laid down on my couch with meditative music playing softly on my phone in the background. I was able to experience that the sound was not coming from the phone, but just appeared in my awareness out of no-where. In fact, all of my perceptions and sensations appeared by themselves, for themselves. It felt that thinking about perception coming from an object is ridiculous. Yes you can say that the membrane in the speaker vibrate, producing air waves that travel to my ear. But that really doesn’t say anything. It is a conceptual idea, which is very different from the experience of the music itself. Concept has an experience of its own, and experience of the music has a life of its own. It is not far or close, loud or quiet, left or right. It’s just a perception by itself. When I start conceptualizing about it - I lose the experience of it and switch to the experience of conceptualizing. 3. Third trip was about the nature of Experience and Awareness. Everything became quiet and my brain entered a supercharged mode. Thoughts were flying around like clouds in a time-lapse video. It hit me out of the blue, that everything in existence is an experience happening in the present moment. It’s really all it is… When I think about the past, I have an experience of a thought of a past. The past doesn’t exist as its own entity. I realized what Awareness is the occurrence of all the experiences in the present. Awareness gives the experience a ground. It shapes it and makes it real. I understood that Awareness was not separate from experience. I couldn’t point to Awareness, because everywhere is only experience. I though “What does that say about me then?”. Well when I feel something, there is just the experience of it by itself. When I’m sad – that’s the experience of sadness, when I’m thinking – that’s the experience of human thought, when I go to the washroom – that’s the experience of it. There is only the collection of experiences happening right now, the rest is a concept (which is also a type of experience). For example, imagine there is a closed box with an object inside. You look at it and you don’t know what’s inside, you just have the experience of the box. When you look inside and find the object, you might think “oh this object was inside all this time”. But that’s not the true. There was no object inside, only the experience of a closed box. When you opened it, now you have the experience of what’s inside. And when you think that it was there all along – you have that experience in the present moment! It wasn’t there before, there is no before… That leaves the Self, as just this bundle of perceptions and experiences – Awareness. After the peak After each peak, came a state of full blissfulness and peace. I felt like I can stay in this place forever. I thought of walking around with IV fluid drip of 5-Meo-DMT Not surprisingly though, my Ego crept in on me. And I even experienced an Ego backlash with some of my low consciousness activities. But for the rest of the day, I was able to observe my ego, allowed it to be and sort of distance myself. I stayed in a very meditative state until the next day. Overall, the experiences were very profound for me. I kind of set the stage for them with couple of years of meditation, sprinkle of contemplation and reading a little bit of Ralston’s works. But I never truly contemplated the nature of those insights. They came out of no-where. Those insights were very deep, and it will take me years to fully understand them. I think those insights has to penetrate into my machine-like subconscious mind to truly make a shift in perspective. The experience felt very personal and intimate to me. I’m only sharing this here because I feel like 5-MeO have a bad reputation for deeply traumatizing people. I want to show that it might not always be the case. I will continue experimenting in the future and hopefully experience a breakthrough. I want to express my gratitude to Leo for introducing me to 5-MeO @Leo Gura. This substance is no drug! it is consciousness in chemical form. I’ve experienced a massive growth probably equal to few years of strict meditation & contemplation. Thank you Leo! (You’ve changed my life a couple of times by now ) Thanks everybody for support!

- I wake up at 8, getting ready for work - breakfast- usually oats, eggs or yogurt fruit salad - I finish work at 5, have dinner at home - low carb, 2 meals a day - 1 hour of meditation + posture correction - 30 minutes of basic home exercises, shower - 1 hour for myself to watch a TV show or a movie - repeat

If you want a robust workstation I recommend Lenovo. They make high-quality laptops that are plenty powerful and not cheap. I don't think they have touch screens, drawing pens and other small features, but I guarantee they will outlast any cheap brands like Acer and HP by a long shot. A Dell or a Mac would be my second choice, and the rest of the brands shouldn't be seriously considered at all.

I had my top wisdom teeth removed recently. It was a very simple and quick procedure. Local anesthesia takes about 5 minutes, another 5-10 minutes to extract them, and in 20 minutes you're at the door. It was painless, apart from the pinch you feel from the syringe. He actually showed me the teeth he pulled out. They had back spots so it was a good call to get it done. I brush every day, but these suckers are way in the back and hard to get at. The anesthesia wears off in a couple of hours, and the bleeding will stop after 12 hours. In a few days, you will forget you did it all. The only inconvenience is sometimes I have food stuck in the hole where one of the teeth used to be.

I decided to experiment with the Keto diet after following Dr. Ekberg's advice on youtube. I'm not overweight or diabetic, so I wasn't expecting any life-changing results. Nonetheless, I've decided to experiment and share my results. Measuring calories is not my thing, so my Keto wasn't as strict. but I tried to limit the carbs as much as I could, and I felt like I hit the <10% marks most of the time. My diet was pretty good to begin with - I eat lots of veggies, I don't consume wheat products and sugar in large amounts. I've mostly eaten vegan, with some exceptions. I did, however, consume lots of grains (mainly brown rice) and practically no saturated fats. The first week of Keto was challenging, my body and the gut microbiome were adjusting to a new food composition. I experienced fatigues, weakness and headaches, I felt drowsy and weak. The glycogen stores in my muscles were depleted and physical exercising became difficult. Any fast or explosive motion became a struggle. Most of that faded away in the second week, and I started noticing some pretty cool benefits: I noticed my skin and hair health have improved. My hair became elastic and silky, and my skin felt very smooth. My beard started growing at an increasing rate, also the patches and holes in my beard started to fix themself. I experienced improved mental clarity and energy. I felt like a teenager. Sleep quality improved. Mood swings and ADHD has been reduced. My state became very peaceful throughout the day. Waking up in the morning became a breeze. I usually felt very exhausted and dragged my time in the morning. Food cravings subsided and my meals felt much more satiating. I became more sensitive to sugar and my taste became more refined. I lost weight in the first two weeks, about 5-8 pounds. My takeaway is that I've underestimated the importance of fats in the diet, and misunderstood the role of carbs. Fats are building blocks for the brain and hormones, while carbs provide the fuel for short bursts of mental or physical activity. The most healthy leafy green vegetables are low carb, which makes it easy to construct awesome meals full of micro and macronutrients. I enjoy the steady and calm state of consciousness that Keto puts me in. The other benefit has been from an increase in saturated fats, which boosted up my hormones. I've been eating vegan and avoiding animal fats in fear of cholesterol, but this experience completely flipped my perspective on the matter. Lack of quality animal fats in my diet lowered my energy and overall mental/physical wellness without even noticing. I'm a proponent of plant-eating for ethical reasons, but I wish there was a way to get the same benefits.

He actually made a video explaining the sugars

Found a great channel for health and diet advice! Dr. Sten Ekberg This guy is great at breaking down and explaining complex health issues. If you can ignore the clickbaity titles and thumbnails, his advice is excellent and in line with what Leo has been teaching. I do feel like he overemphasizes Keto a bit too much, but I understand where he's coming from. Carbs/Sugar in the American diet has caused so much havoc that pushing the pendulum in the opposite direction is not a bad thing.

I think it goes even deeper than the geopolitical actions of the parties. The whole two-party system is a way of misdirection. In its essence, it's an elaborate reality show. The purpose is to give you a small taste of being involved, without any engagement in any decision making. I see no reason why, with our modern technology, we can't create an online voting system. To ease the pressure on the people in congress and get people involved. But this would mean the average citizen actually gets a say in what's going on. and the argument that Republicans are ignorant and stupid and shouldn't vote doesn't make sense. You can't exclude a decent chunk of the country because they tingle your Green ideals. News and social media agitate their stories to send you down a rabbit hole of resentment for the other party. Meanwhile, they present you with a veneer of someone who can bring real change, and cares about your issues. It's just a pendulum swinging back and forth between the parties. Yes, one party might be slightly more conscious (0.01 vs 0.005%), but the parties are a facade to begin with. The people who genuinely have a say, by the virtue of their dollars, have always been Orange, and their policies are party agnostic. It's very easy to cater to republicans, praise America, embody traditional values, have a stroke of libertarianism, and say that the democrats are pedophiles. It's also very easy to cater to dems, basically show them republicans and shit on them (trigger their Green). None of this addresses issues like the pyramid nature of society, geopolitical wars, insane wealth inequality, absurd monetary system, fake politics etc. All those stories and media hype about Trump, Russia-gate, qanon, big tech etc. are phony. Like the current trend about how big tech is somehow against Trump. In reality, as was uncovered by the whistleblowers in "The Great Hack", Facebook in 2016 collaborated with the Republicans and contributed massively to the rise of nationalism in the UK and the US..

A great documentary on Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, for anybody who wants to know the man:

@HERO_ same boat here, been living completely by myself for 3 years in a new city. It tricky when u have to give a contact or need a hand moving furniture. Holidays can be a downer sometimes, but they're overhyped anyway. I was talking to the barber the other day, and she was shocked that I can't go anywhere on Christmas and have no plans for it. It's definitely a balance, and I'm not a proponent of complete Isolation. I've been on both ends of the spectrum, where I've spent years of my life socializing, and now all my time by myself. I think something is lost when you're in a group of people. You're in a different mind set, you start to think more collectively and focus on externalities, rather than perceiving clearer, deeper and more being introspective. Shared activities are nice, but often I don't find them to be very conscious. A group's state of consciousness will gravitate towards the average, which is not ideal sometimes. I also write this as an extrovert, my natural state is being very communicative and social.

keep it in the fridge. it'll keep the ants away and when more solid it's easier to scoop.

Apes don't have the capacity to realize God

If you're planning on ingesting, ie (4-AcO), you can try the following: Measure out 50mg accurate, then pre-mix it with 500ml of water. This way your 50ml doses will have 5mg substance. (should work for plugging too, but you'd have to use lower volume).

It's difficult to describe one function by itself. Usually, there is a pair of dominant functions that work hand in hand to create a type. Both are intuitive functions. Ne is all about possibilities and potential. When Ne looks at something, it immediately sees all the possible scope for what this thing could have been, and what it is currently not. It's all about diversity, novelty and variety. Actualized is a good example of Ne. It incorporated lots of novelty and coverts many topics. Ne users see hidden meanings and make seemingly unusual interconnections, which makes them naturally metaphysical. Ni is introverted intuition, it's all about time, specifically past and future. it sees everything as a process unfolding in time. Ni users are excellent at learning from past mistakes and predicting the future. Ni types are very intuitive, they like to daydream, and can appear distant at times. They usually know the exact right time to do something - minimum action maximum impact. Ni users have an excellent imagination, they can maneuver any situation with minimal input data. They have amazing deductions skills. Both functions are concerned with time. Ni stretches the timeline in both directions. Ne stretches the present moment frame and fills it with possibilities and potential.