emind

Hi guys. I hope you're doing great. I'm in a bit of a dilemma right now, and would really appreciate your input. Background I was fortunate enough to have grown up in really affluent circles. The people I went to school with were pretty much the richest people of my country (think politicians, large business owners, etc). With the passing of time, I outgrew many of the beliefs and people I was raised with and have been paving my way for a few years now. Recently, however, I ran into some of those people again, and experienced some cognitive dissonance. A bit more Background As I said, the environment/culture I grew up in was one where people cared about practicality, money, and profit. There was very little talk of what you were aiming to do in life, higher purpose,mastery, etc. I recognize these things are not inherently bad. In fact, I have been going through a massive immersion into stage orange myself for the past year or so. I've been increasing my income, been competitive in what I do, been strategizing for business etc. However, everything I've done has always been in the spirit of mastering my craft (technology industry). Money is crucial, but secondary to higher purpose. The Cognitive Dissonance So here I run into these people, and there they are, discussing business, talking about ways to make money, wanting to do business with me, etc. This is great (I do it myself all the time), but what really turned me off was the angle with which they approached it. Everything they said had an exploitative intention behind it, and there was no talk about mastery, or appreciation of people as such, but rather what they could do for you. It was shameless networking and self promotion, coupled with a lot of bragging and status games. These people seem to appreciate me (or so I think), and are eager to hang out again, include me into their world, etc. But frankly, the mere thought of doing so makes me sick. One part of me says that not getting together with them is a lost opportunity to make money and could be the source of a limiting belief. But another tells me it goes against my principles. I feel disgusted and feel like I'm being looked at as a mere tool, and am really turned off by their obsessive materialism (money-wise, not ontological). Am I limiting myself? Or should I follow my intuition? Thanks in advance.

Hi everyone. I have a trip to the US coming up soon, and was wondering if there are any places in Florida which are ideal for daytime and nighttime pickup and are not excessively expensive (i.e. Miami). Do you have any recommendations? I work remotely so it'd be cool if I could also do some daygame wherever I happen to be working for the day (e.g coffeeshop, co-working space, etc). Any advice is appreciated!

The pleasure was mine! I likewise love your content and the valuable insights and guidance you offer to the community. Would love to collaborate again sometime in the not-too-distant future. Thanks again for coming on !

Hi everyone! I hope you're all doing great. I frankly don't know if I'm violating any guidelines by doing shameless self-promotion, but I genuinely think this content is something many of you will enjoy. It's a podcast interview I did on my YouTube channel about Enlightement, Consciousness, and Idealism vs. Materialism with Ethan Schaltegger. Feel free to check it out!

Hi guys, just wanted to share a recent personal experience that made me reflect on the nature of trauma release. After going through some amount of stress (financial/work-related) for the past few months, and not having dedicated any time to meditation or spirituality, I experienced a sudden cathartic trauma release. It was completely out of the blue (well, kind of, really). I'd been diligently focused on the mundane matters of my daily material existence, devoting my whole-hearted attention to DOING, instead of BEING. I was in a sort of productivity streak fueled by trauma. Though the experience was indeed unexpected, I had noticed signs that I was holding on to something along the way. As I forcefully ignored the cries of my inner child, and powered through another work session, I could physically feel my shoulders tensing up, my chest closing. It was only until a couple of days ago, that my rigid dam of emotional inhibition broke. I suddenly started getting vivid flashbacks of multiple traumatic episodes that I thought I had resolved. Feelings of guilt, sadness, and regret started flooding every inch of my psyche. After finding myself so overwhelmed, I intuited that it was best to take some time to explore these feelings in depth, and cancelled all my plans that afternoon. As I plunged into the profundity of my sadness, I cried and cried and cried, uncontrollably, for more than an hour. I found out I felt guilty for things I hadn't admitted to myself before, and noticed that the small sore spots of anger that drove me crazy so often, were just superficial layers of defensiveness covering pain, hurt, and vulnerability. But here's the thing that amazed me the most: the level of vividness with which I relived those painful episodes was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was so raw and real, that it seemed like a trip back in time. It was incredibly rejuvenating and refreshing. Suffice to say, I have slept incredibly well since, and feel light like a feather. I'm still keeping the same levels of productivity, but have chosen to do so more consciously.

Brief Background To be honest I don't even know if I can objectively determine in which stage of spiral dynamics I am, given the bias inherent in such self-assesment. I have a healthy meditation practice, I love exploring all religions, the parallelisms between their scriptures and so on. I also deeply appreciate cross disciplinary assessments of complex phenomena, and have always struggled with specialization;my mind has always tended towards the general, as opposed to the microscopic. My Confusion Most of my friends are a mix of blue and orange, some more blue than orange, and vice versa. I have noticed that when certain friends who are avidly religious make their opinions known to me, I really have to hold my tongue back to not overreact. I get significantly triggered when I hear viewpoints that are typically characteristic of stage blue. At the same time, I have a knee jerk reaction of disdain(although to a lesser degree) towards the glorification of science, especially certain individuals like Elon Musk, Neil Tyson, and so on, as well as the apathetic "every man for himself" mentality so idiosyncratic of stage orange. Start up culture, "hustle culture", and social media marketing...they all rub me the wrong way. What I struggle to understand is why my emotional reactions towards these attitudes are so markedly strong. Is it possible that I have shadows of these stages which I haven't integrated?

@Leo Gura Even granting the ultimate truth about "isms" and moral ideologies like you said, shouldn't there be (if not for the enlightened, at least for people who are less cognitively and spiritually evolved) a code of principles by which societal goals are established and norms are determined?

@FlowerNote I have the exact same question.

Hi guys. I hope you're all doing great. I thought it would be apt to share a video I made here concerning Ambiguities in Language and their abuses in politics. While I do understand that poltics is as much a matter of the spiritual development of citizens and their governors as it is about logical analysis, a definitional clarity akin to that used in scientific reasoning could very well aid us in avoiding these abuses. Don't you think?

Man I wish I could understand it. My mind was absolutely blown when I watched this. Eric had me way out of my depths. He is one of my favorite thinkers though. Having a remarkable ability to see the big picture, and to transition from one discipline to another with considerable ease, he leaves other more narrow minded scientists and thinkers paling in comparison. Although I do admire him tremendously from an intellectual standpoint, he does seem to be severely lacking in spiritual awareness. But again, he doesn't have to have everything bogged down to be recognized as excellent in some domains. I would recommend listening to one of his recent podcast episodes with Daniel Schmachtenberger. They present a truly inspiring example of systemic macro level reasoning.

By far one of my favorites

Im going to go off on a limb here and explore an avenue that most of you will probably not like. But bear with me. First off, let me just say that I completely despise his derogatory attitude and language towards women and sex. I do not approve of that in the least. But with that said, there is something that initially made me think that this was an evolution into yellow as opposed to a regression towards blue; as well as an organic reaction against the admittedly toxic manifestations of green (which even Leo has talked about) so widely prevalent nowadays. He reminds me a lot of Jordan Peterson and his guidance of young men from the deep mists of nihilism (despite being a nihilist myself, it can be quite harmful if gone unintegrated) to the safe haven of traditional moral principles. So here's my main take on it: 1. Despite all the Christian talk, if you look at how he approaches religion, you will notice a mystical, non dual angle. He emphasizes spiritual experience over hyper-rationalizing, frequently issues relativistic caveats (greenish) like "call it God, the Universe, or whatever you like", and practices and advocates long forms of spiritual fasting with an emphasis on its ability to cleanse your demons and trauma, aka shadow work. 2. Something gives me the impression that what's motivating him to encourage men to "roughen up", disregard emotions, and ride this wave of masculine revisionism is actually a yellowish systemic awareness. For all its crassness, all that talk about men "being sissies and "not being strong enough" is in fact a way of describing a very real, widespread problem in current generations, who experience meaninglessness and lack of direction in life. There is a reason why folks like Hulse and Peterson resonate so much, because at some level of the spiral, this advice is in fact useful. 3. Regarding #2, this is not to say that the kind of advice they give is the ideal one. It just happens to be the most readily accessible to them.

I feel so trapped in this sticky web of thoughts, doubts, and uncertainties that a little outside perspective would be of great help. So I´ll try to make it as brief and concise as possible. Background I am just now graduating college with a business degree. Never had a job (except working for my parents) and have been raised in an overprotective, overly comfortable environment. This is something I´m thankful for but that I feel is significantly hindering my growth as an independent human being. For reasons that would be too lengthy to explain in this post, I didn´t end up studying what I´m actually passionate about, namely, philosophy. I have pursued this passion as a hobby for many years, to the point which I´d say I have significant value and knowledge to offer to the world in this domain, potentially making it my life purpose. I´ve tried doing this (with some small amount of success) through Youtube, but there are many skills I still need to master (video and audio editing, animation, presentation, storytelling, etc.) and the road to success is long and tortuous. It´ll be a long time till I make a living out of it (if I ever do). I intend to master these skills regardless of whether or not I end up becoming succesful, because I believe they are intrinsically valuable, they truly fire my soul up. The Problem The only obstacle to this is that coupled with this dream, I have a pressing personal concern to become financially independent. I feel my life is going by and I want to live it to its fullest. Being raised in a somewhat controlling environment, I feel like the next step for growth for me is moving out (either merely out of my parents´ or also to a different country). In the Spiral Dynamics lingo, I would say that I want to fully live out stage orange and everything in it. Although I love meditation, spirituality, and non-duality, I still feel I have a lingering shadow of materialism, money, monetary ambition, etc. Part of me wishes to live out the "RSD PUA lifestyle" and corroborate first person that its not going to make me happy, before proceeding to aggressively achieve enlightenment. So in an effort to acquire this financial freedom, I struck out to learn a few skills (mostly front end programming and copywriting) and over the past few months have attempted to "make it" as a freelancer. I partrially branched off from my philosophical pursuits because I believed that taking this path (freelancing) would lead me to independence way faster. To my disappointment, I´ve only landed a few gigs here and there, and have had limited success at best. I´ve been really disciplined in developing the skills I need but they have thus far not borne much fruit. When I finally receive my B.A. diploma in few weeks, the pressure to cave in to the horrible 9-5 job life will be ever so greater, and I have on idea how to avoid it. In summary I am trying to reconcile the following facts about my life: On the one hand I have: - A deep desire to pursue a life purpose in philosophy - Another deep longing for financial and mental freedom (get some breath outside of my environment) And on the other hand I have: -An immense pressure to hop into the 9-5 rat race -Uncertainty about a potentially succesful path to freedom through freelancing Any insight would be of great help. I am being consumed by desperation.

I've been trying to set out a career as a freelance copywriter for the past few months (with some limited success), and had been incredibly hyped about it over the past few weeks. But then something happened... and I want to know what you think about it. I started noticing how copywriting and sales in general made feel, and it was nothing but (I legitimately can't describe it differently) disgust. The idea of superficially pitching to clients, getting to know some random, potentially useless product they sell, and then trying to coax people into buying it through the power of the written word. I mean seriously... how hypocritical of me! I was feeling really excited about it a few weeks ago and thought I might just go all the way with it but I hadn't stopped to realize how disingenuous it is! Pretending to like and care about some crappy vacuum cleaner I'm helping sell, or the package options for some greedy insurance company, I mean this is fundamentally against my values. To be fair, there are actual useful products and services out there which merit being marketed and sold because they are really going to help people. But copywriting in general has an air of duplicity. I'm considering shifting my work focus towards something that has more tangible and verifiable value (don't know what yet). Copywriting seems like a fancy word for the art of bullshitting. - Yes I know that statement is unfair and overgeneralizing, but you get where I'm coming from. Am I wrong? Am I trying to rationalize away my failures? I mean I hope not...

Emotional Groundedness One of the main things I've been trying to pursue through my meditation practices is achieving emotional groundedness and stability. I have a very over active mind, and my energy is all over the place. I typically struggle to hold my own whenever I'm having a disagreement with someone else (due to nervousness and fear), and am just generally very frenetic. Although I have managed to partially control this energy through a daily meditation practice, it very rarely lasts beyond 2 hours after my meditation session. And this is what I realized... Although experiences of no-self are extremely valuable and typically bring with them emotional groundedness, they are not one and the same with groundedness per-se. Not only that, but the thing that I was really going after in my meditation practice (without really knowing it consciously) was simply acquiring a more grounded and calm attitude. Although my goals may seem incredibly trivial for the metaphysically inclined, achieving emotional groundedness is a priority for me. Im still young and haven't yet established a career or acquired the material wealth I want to acquire, I am still largely in stage Orange of SD, whether I want it or not, and I cant force myself to the upper stages prematurely. So my question is, how can I develop a specific, and very practical plan, exclusively designed to achieve emotional groundedness? Do you know any resources? Ultimately what I'm trying to pursue is that calm, peaceful, unperturbed, and confident state you achieve after a really good meditation session.

@Consilience Hey! I checked out the book on Amazon and it looks really good! I'm going to buy it and stick with it. Thanks for the advice!

@Preety_India Wow, that was a really good post, seriously thank you. I am definitely going to try a few things on that list. I feel caffeine affects me tremendously, and I also have a thing for artificial sweeteners, which I've heard are neurotoxic.

Hey guys! Whats up? I've been trying to make philosophy videos on Youtube and have released some over the years. After a bit of a hiatus I want to approach the craft with more dilligence but wanted to know what you thought about the videos I've made so far. I recognize that you might not agree with some of the views and ideas that I touch upon, but above and beyond that, I was wondering what you thought about the quality of the videos, the presentation, delivery, visual aspects, entertainment value, and any other things you find relevant. I would appreciate it very much! Hopefully your insights will enable me to make higher quality videos. Here's my channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9cYcFW-bN-xzx-nQaLE_Rw/videos?view_as=subscriber Thank you very much in advance!

@Leo Gura Really? How aggressive a marketing plan do you need for Youtube? Doesn't the algorithm take care of it itself if you provide quality content?

So I've been meditating very consistently for the past two months and a half. An hour every single day, mostly alternating between focusing on my breath and "Do Nothing". Some really strange things have started to happen, and although I think they're good, it's kind of confusing. These are the changes I've been noticing: No sex drive whatsoever: I used to be addicted to fapping, all I would think about was sex. I used to masturbate around twice a day on average. Since at least the past month and a half, I have had no sexual cravings whatsoever, I don't feel motivated at all to pursue sex, and the times I have masturbated (like 3 times in the past 50 days) have been merely to "remember" how it felt, and it felt kind of forced to do it when I didn't feel like it... I know it sounds really weird. I've started noticing how messed up the people whose attention and validation I so much craved before really are. I used to be so invested into going out, hanging out with "cool people", meeting girls and hooking up, etc. Now I see how screwed up and unhappy many of those people are behind the shining facade of superficial happiness. I still care about my appearance and how other people perceive me, but my concern for this has decreased very noticeably. This point relates to unhappiness more broadly. I have come to look at the world through this very bleak outlook. Noticing how unsatisfied and miserable people are in every facet of life. Disconnected from their jobs and what they do, unable to sustain even unconscious relationships, living paycheck to paycheck, needing someone to "complete them", being carried away by advertisements, meaningless fads, and trivial trends like a leaf in the wind, having corporations dictate their interests (e.g. "OMG did you look at the new Iphone?!" "Did you watch the new movie that came out? It was awesome!") etc... Feeling at times so inspired by life that tears are almost dripping down my face, and also, at other times, hopeless at the utter meaningless of existence. As arrogant as this may sound, I say it with complete honesty- I've just started noticing how low the lowest common denominator really is. How mediocre the average person is, how much failure is the norm. And deep inside myself, I've noticed a fear of becoming this way, and a growing negative motivation to work hard to not end up divorced, overweight, with an alienating job, etc. Feeling very lonely, like no one really gets me or shares my vision for life. Things that haven't changed My Neuroticism has pretty much remained the same. Although I have episodes of satisfying emotional stillness and bliss more frequently, I am still pretty anxious and stressed a lot of the time, and I still get triggered by pretty much the same things. I haven't lost ambition in the least. It just seems to be that the objects towards which I channel my ambition have changed. I contemplate with more frequency the impact I want to have on the world, unprecedented and extended discipline in fitness and nutrition, contemplation on my life purpose, etc. So my question is, are these things normal? Are these feelings and shifts of attitudes a sign that Im on the right path, or mere delusions and rationalizations?

@Esoteric Same here! I couldn't finish watching it. He seems awfully bitter and haughty.

@bazera From my limited knowledge of economics (undergrad micro and macro), and, coming from a left leaning individual, I have come to think that the minimum wage does more harm than good under a free market system. Products and services organically reach an equilibrium point between supply and demand. This is the point at which economic efficiency is maximized, that is to say, the price (in this case the wage level) at which there are no people looking for someone to hire but unable to find them because the price is too high and they don't have the money to pay for it, and also the price at which there are no people unwilling to work because the price (again, in this case, the wage level) is too low. Classical economic theory dictates that this equilibrium is naturally reached without outside interference from the government (such as quotas, tariffs, or in this case minimum wage). It is out of the free flowing exchange of information between producers and consumers that the equilibrium price arises. And so, what the minimum wage does (according to the theory), is interfere and disrupt the natural equilibrium by making it mandatory for business owners (in this case the demand) to pay a higher price than they naturally would; a price at which way fewer people could be employed (due to increased costs for businesses). The minimum wage would undoubtedly help those employees who do happen to be lucky enough to get a job, because they would be earning more, but in aggregate, it would leave a lot more people unemployed. Now, with that said, take it with a grain of salt, because I have also heard of case studies that indicate that a minimum wage policy doesn't negatively affect employment. Some people suggest that it might be a spectrum; that you can increase the minimum wage to a certain extent without it affecting employment levels, but that there is a threshold past which it does in fact start negatively affecting employment levels. In other words, it might not be as binary as much of the discourse suggests, maybe it's a continuum.

Hi guys! I made a video trying to explain Sam Harris's view on morality, moral realism. I think getting our views on morality straight is essential given that they underpin our political outlook on many issues. Let me know what you think!

@Extreme Z7 Thanks! I really appreciate it!

I was curious what you guys´ thoughts were on this article, I feel like its pretty accurate. Married couples dont seem to be very well connected to their communities (friends, family, etc.) I personally dont like to bash on marriage, undoubtedly it works for some people. But a good question I was asking myself the other day was: "How many married couples do I know that havent grown stale unambitious and unhealthy?" Unfortunately the answer for me was "none". https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/07/case-against-marriage/591973/