Emerald

There is no guarantee that my mind isn't lying to me. In fact, everything that I've every assumed about reality could be totally untrue. Such is the nature of a human being's epistemological blindspot. We cannot know the objective truth. No matter how many times I've woken up to my nature as God, I will always be limited and unaware of what I'm unaware of as long as I am Emerald. In fact, in my last Ayahuasca experience, I kept affirming "I am choosing to be limited" as I was cutting myself off from the infinite knowledge as God was showing me the burdens of the infinite on the shoulders of the finite. That is what it means to embrace one's humanity. It means accepting the handicaps and limitations of your ability to know and exercising faith, which has always been difficult for me as my issues have always been about lacking trust in what is outside of myself. As a human being, we can NEVER know anything beyond a shadow of a doubt. And I've tried and tried and spun my wheels in daily constant contemplation since early childhood. And that's I cannot know what's true and what's illusion whether I'm deciding to seek enlightenment or choosing to surrender to my humanity. I could always be dead wrong. And I've gone around and around in this contemplating over the years. But I am choosing to exercise faith in my experiences of God and my experiences in general despite and because of my limitations. And I have decided to trust that my realizations of God are real... and to trust what it has shown me and to use it as a navigational tool. And along with this, I am choosing to surrender to and trust my own internal compass. But of course, everything I've ever experienced and known could be and likely is an illusion. But that is not for me to know.

Do you really want truth?

First off, much of this will sound way out there... because these are what my medicine journeys have shown me. And I have adopted many of these insights into how I approach my life, as they have helped me get on track with what I really want to experience. I just wanted to preface it before I answer. 1. Enlightenment isn't a denial as there is no one there to deny anything. It is simply a total dispossession of the illusion of the story that you are currently living to the point were there is nothing but pure consciousness. It is where reality (including yourself) blows away like dust in the wind and empty consciousness itself remains. But human attachments can be an impediment to a human being relinquishing the illusion of life and reality. This is why it can be more difficult to wake up as a householder because there is more to be attached to. 2. Yes, ego dissolution is death itself, just not death from a bodily perspective. It's a death from the perspective of consciousness. The way I would describe it is that it's like a drop of water getting sublimated into the ocean... only that ocean is pure nothingness and pure consciousness. 3. Yes, that's correct. I was shown in my medicine journey that the reason why God decided to split off an element of its consciousness to incarnate into the illusory finite form Emerald is because this element of its consciousness did not want to be open and accepting of infinite suffering. And to be reintegrated with God, there must be a total willingness to create, know, experience, and love all things in existence... including all suffering. And it was too much for this point of God's consciousness, so out of mercy to itself, God cut away this part of itself and incarnated it into a finite form where there is a finite amount of suffering to experience. And it was through the contraction and limitation that there was mercy. 4. Yes, it showed me that Emerald was the illusion/story that was woven for this purpose. And the preference at this point, seems to be to live infinite lifetimes as this character in order to avoid the awareness of infinite suffering and infinite knowledge. It also in other journeys showed me many permutations of Emerald lives, as this is where God's suffering part goes to get a vacation from the infinite. And it even reassured me in my last journey that I took that I could choose to live as many lives as Emerald as I wanted to. And it has shown me how valuable the function of my life is as it is only in the finite and imperfection that consciousness can experience meaning and beauty. And it showed me that, if I have a choice between being God and being Emerald, that it is wiser for me to handicap myself into smallness and limitation and choose Emerald.

There definitely is such a thing as spiritual bypassing. And I'm 100% sure that Sadhguru would agree with me on this as he has his tales about Shankaran Pilai that he tells which is all about the foolishness of a spiritual bypasser. Just keep in mind that moving towards transcendence is VERY different from a resistance to the Earthly. Remember, that which you resist persists. And you cannot transcend what you have an aversion to.... as you will be like Briar Rabbit fighting with the tar baby.

I'll try to make this clearer... but I am explaining something ineffable, so it's difficult for me to simplify it. In a nutshell, in my Ayahuasca experiences each one has come with a realization that myself as Emerald and God are like two sides of the same coin. In one of them, I experience a total ego dissolution and there was no Emerald and just God. And in the others, Emerald remained intact but my awareness expanded to see the connection to God. Almost like if a twig on a tree expanded its scope of awareness to realize that it is also the tree itself, when before the scope of its consciousness was too narrow to sense that it was part of a bigger tree. That is what happened in these experiences where my human consciousness expanded until I realized the connection with God's consciousness... and that there was no separation between the two. And there have been many conversations in my medicine journeys that I had with God as both the twig and the entire tree including the twig at once. And in these interactions between myself as Emerald and myself as the infinite, it has shown be a lot about the life it/I have chosen and why it/I have chosen to live this particular life... and why enlightenment isn't part of this lifetime. And in my ego dissolution experience, there was no Emerald. Emerald was just a story in a character that was a total illusion and never actually existed. There was just pure consciousness. And this was enlightenment and death, which were one and the same. And I could have chosen that. But I decided that I wanted to live the finite experience. And I have chosen the finite over the infinite by choosing to handicap myself to get away from infinite knowledge and infinite love. And it is in these limitations that meaning and beauty are born. This is the path of contraction, where you fully embrace the Earthly forms and live the finite experience of life. It is the opposite of enlightenment which is the path of expansion, and is about transcendence of the illusion of the Earthly forms and is death itself. And the latter was shown to me to be a very difficult path that is only sought out by a small number of people (like monks) who incarnated here just to go through the difficult "game" of transcending it. God showed me this to create an understanding of the contrast between my life's path and a monk's life path... where mine is more about receiving the gift of the illusion rather than transcending it. It's sort of like playing the video game... instead of deconstructing the console and exploring the code. I hope this is somewhat understandable, but I recognize it may not be because it is describing elements of the ineffable.

I'm not even talking about as an aftermath after a man gets his sexual drives out of his system. I mean in general... regardless of sexual appetites or gender. It's pretty evident to me that most people don't actually want enlightenment... including those who believe they do. My perception from his posts is that the OP doesn't really want enlightenment, but that he's moreso just in resistance to life. And that's a different thing from genuinely being on the expansion path.

Yes, sometimes the way we say things with language can muddy the waters of concepts like self-love. And we come to ask "How can I love myself?" But in actuality the love is just there and can't not be there.

Anything that anchors you to your human life and Earthly form prevents you from enlightenment. These things that anchor you deeper into the story. Attachment to anything of the material realm can hold you here and in resistance to the death. But my question is... does the OP actually want awakening? Is that actually part of his story here that he moves towards from a place of genuinely wanting that? Or is he just in resistance to life... and wants to use seeking enlightenment as an excuse to run away from himself by spiritually bypassing his pain? Likewise, I could ask the same of everyone on this forum who seeks enlightenment. My estimate is that very few who seek it really truly want it. When I was given the option, I realized that I didn't want it as I preferred to maintain the illusions of the finite and the separate for the wealth of human experiences that I can have. One thing that God showed me in one of my medicine journeys is that God likes to play different kinds of games with itself as a means of managing the infinite mercy and suffering it must experience. And it plays mercy and suffering games with itself to maximize its own mercy whilst still holding space for suffering and never negating it. And this enables it to handle its infinite existence because the games it builds in are like levers of release. And one of the games is to spit the parts of itself that are overwhelmed by the infinite into finite contracted forms. And those finite contracted parts experience a limited amount of suffering and mercy. And it is within these limitations of the finite story where meaning and beauty are born. And it showed me that monks play this really difficult game of dispossessing themselves of their human forms and transcending life to experience the mercy from contraction and illusion, but that this is an uncommon game to play that is pretty much reserved for monk-types because most that are incarnated here don't prefer this path... even if they believe they do. And that makes sense... in the majority of cases, why would God choose to incarnate here in the first place just to have its avatar wake up to the illusion it has spun? But it showed me that he and I are playing a different kind of game than the monks that's, where it creates a reality for me and I receive all the positives and negatives of that reality as a gift. It's encouraged me to think of myself like a Paris Hilton type getting spoiled by her rich daddy. In Tantra (which means expansion/contraction), it has shown me that my path is one of contraction. And I just don't get the sense that the OP would be seeking awakening from a place of a genuine desire to transcend the Earthly... but moreso that he is motivated by a resistance to the Earthly that would be best to stop running away form.

Sadhguru and I are in agreement here. You are love itself. This is why unconditional love is unconditional. And you couldn't stop loving yourself if you tried... because love is your nature. You simply must recognize that the ways you're trying to serve your own best interests are backfiring, and then reorient them in a way that actually serves your best interest.

The trick to understanding how to love yourself is simply to recognize that you already are unconditionally loving yourself and trying ALWAYS to serve your best interests. But we can do this is ways that backfire. For example, I could engage in TONS of self-criticism because I believe that the self-criticism protects me from being rejected by others. So, in this case I am trying to protect myself from rejection because I love myself. But it is backfiring and creating worse outcomes. So you CANNOT stop loving yourself, even if you tried as unconditional love is truly unconditional. But the trick is to see the way you're trying to serve yourself by engaging in these "unloving" behaviors and then find other more beneficial means to meet your needs. But the first thing you MUST do is to begin finding the positive expressions of the qualities you consider to be negative about yourself... and to celebrate those parts of yourself. You must learn to like yourself as you are, instead of trying to "fix" yourself or become someone else... precisely because trying to change/fix yourself is a backfiring strategy for loving yourself.

Thank you!

It's not an active cutting out and excluding. It's more focused towards magnetism and inclusion of those who are magnetized... and building out my inner circle with compatible people. And I'm certainly open to interacting with anyone who respects my boundaries and having them in my outer circle. And I do like a lot of people who aren't necessarily compatible with me. And I have learned enough in the way of social skills to get by in most social contexts. But I know that, if I'm looking for a deep and lasting relationship, that I have to attract in compatible people by showing up fully as myself. To give an analogy, it's like marketing a product to the wrong target audience. It might be the most valuable product ever to the right target audience. But if you market the product to the wrong target audience, that product won't be valued at all. And anytime in my life where my strengths have been viewed as weaknesses by those I'm closely surrounded by, it's always led to regressions in my growth and a feeling of being on shaky ground as it hits that survival concern around the potential of being exiled. Also, in regard to your question about avoiding seeing my flaws by attracting like-minded people... is that what I've found since starting my YouTube channel and attracting in lots of people who are similar to me is that it's helped me so much with self-reflection. Before I knew others who were engaged with inner work, I had a whole bunch of blindspots. And I even had this sense of specialness about it that caused me to be unaware of my blindspots. But interacting with lots of like-minded people dispossessed me of a lot of these. And now I've met and become acquainted with 100s of people over the years who are on a similar path and each has been a mirror for me where I can learn about my own patterns and Shadows. I find that I learn the most about myself through interacting with other people. But there's also a lot to learn from being generally acquainted with members of the general populace as well.

From a friendship and relationship perspective, it has always helped me sort through to people that I'm compatible with. What I've found is that you have to turn off 99% of people with your weirdness by letting your freak flag fly and being super authentic, so that the wrong ones weed themselves out. And then, you end up surrounded only by people (friends and romantic partners) who really value you for who you are. And by embracing your strange flavor... you become a beacon that attracts those who value you like moths to a flame.

The joke he made doesn't go over my boundaries personally, as it was more at the OP's expense than ours... and I've interact with him somewhat frequently on here over the past 8 years whenever I engage with this forum. And I take it more as a mildly flirtatious wink and a nod about the comical angle of the OP's post being about attachment to women distracting him from enlightenment. But I agree that he has some issues in the Feminine integration department (as do most men on this forum in varying degrees), and that comes out in a generally dismissive relationship with women and with Femininity in general. He seems to fear it and doesn't trust it, and I notice he has a generally protective stance against it. It also shows up in less obvious ways in his orientation being more anti-feminine in an archetypal sense as well... with the focus towards transcendence, loftiness, intellect, abstraction, spirituality, etc.... and a sense of trying to get away from Earthly limitations. Think of a tree... with branches being the masculine and roots being the feminine. And those who are resistant to the feminine put all the focus on the branches while resisting the roots. And these 'branches over the roots' viewpoints are patriarchal viewpoints... but most don't recognize them as such because they don't have to do with human gender. But these mind over matter viewpoints are the actual root of misogyny. And anyone who has strong 'Yang to the exclusion of Yin" viewpoints will believe overtly or subtly that women are both lesser than and greater than themselves simultaneously. And it creates this hatred/love obsession thing in varying degrees... mildly or overtly depending on how integrated the person is with the Feminine or isn't. And all of those conflicting feelings about the Feminine principle end up being projected onto human women... which is annoying and sometimes painful to be on the receiving end of. This is what is up with communities like Red Pill... but it isn't just limited to those communities. It impacts every single person, regardless of gender as it is the deep conditioning of the past few thousand years that we're only just now getting to the cusp between the old patriarchal era and the new integrated era. So the collective resistance to the feminine, leads to a dynamic where it puts you up on a pedestal... then resents that you're up on a pedestal and then tries to drag you down off of it. I used to have similar issues myself until I shifted my values to ones that are more integrated with Yin. And before this integration, when men would be dismissive or demeaning towards me... it used to be really triggering because I agreed with them on subtle but pervasive levels that I didn't then consciously understand. Before like 10 years ago, I always had polarly pro-masculine anti-feminine values (that I saw a gender neutral because of my lack of awareness of archetypes) that I picked up from he culture. And this led me to believe at a deep semi-conscious level that I am inferior. And when men would act that way, it would hit that wound and bring me down into all these feelings of shame in being a woman and being a Feminine energy being in general. But now, having worked through all of that quite a bit, when I see individual men (or women for that matter) struggling with misogyny in varying degrees and resistance to the Feminine it doesn't trigger my wounding anymore because I relate to the vulnerability in it. I just mostly see someone struggling against a significant part of themselves. And what I eventually realized is that people who have a dismissive attitude towards women don't actually see the Feminine as powerless or negative, even if they act like they do. They just try to convince themselves of that because they feel powerless to the Feminine and are projecting that onto women and shadow boxing in an archetypal fight that doesn't involve human women much at all. So as long as I'm not stuck in a context where I have to tolerate it, I'm happy to interact as long as it doesn't traverse my boundaries or encroach upon my personal power and autonomy.

We can't help it! We're just too enchanting.

What seems evident to me is that you have a feeling of not being good enough and a feeling of shame. And this translates into a feeling like you need to be something other than what you are to be attractive to a woman. And because you're operating off of that sense of shame and 'not being good enough', you are trying to transcend your humanity to get relief from that feeling... and also (as an oppositional force to transcendence) trying to be what you believe women are always attracted to. It is a struggle to fight against the powerlessness you feel in relation to women... as a result of your feelings of shame and projecting your feelings of 'not being enough' onto women. But you cannot resolve the shame by becoming more transcendent... nor by becoming more masculine... nor by "fixing" or changing yourself in any way. The only remedy is to love and accept yourself unconditionally... and it would be wise to begin by accepting your feminine side as this will rescind some of the projections onto women that give them an outsized feeling of power over you.

The economy crashing is one of his keys, so that would change the election outcome within his model as well. And I'm sure it will be a close race too. But I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss a predictive model that has consistently worked election year over election year. Of course, models are just models. But it's at least as viable of a source as polling is, given its track record.

These might seem like a straightforward questions with straightforward answers. But why do you want to detach from everything? Why do you want to go to a cabin in the mountains and meditate/do yoga 12 hours per day? Why do you want to peacefully let death enter you? Why are these things even good for you? Why do you want to transcend being human? Are you running away from something... or towards something?

Because the things that online lefties tend to advocate for tend to be about giving more power to the little guy, there are no big money interests that want to put money into them as this is the very thing that threatens their interests. The last thing they want is a populace of peasants working in solidarity. Lefties only get money from powerful interests if they transition to the right and act as the token "Why I left the left" person.... like Dave Rubin types. So, it's not like lefties are just more principled or something like that. I'm sure there are plenty of online lefties who would accept money from shady places and sell out at a moment's notice. It's just that powerful interests don't benefit from financing them. Also, the audiences of lefty thought leaders tend to be purists with their values and usually prioritize their values over their allegiance to the thought leader. One thing I like about the left is that they're generally not very sycophantic and are 100% willing to throw Bernie Sanders (for instance) into the proverbial wood chipper the second that he falters from integrity with the values he purports. Now, one exception to lefties not being the recipient of money from powerful groups... could be like with authoritarian lefties and tankies online. Because they are authoritarian left instead of libertarian left, they could get funding from large Communist governments that would benefit from people believing in authoritarian left positions.

His keys are based off of clearly defined qualifiers that have been observed consistently in every election going back to the mid-1800s. And he has gotten every election outcome correct in his lifetime, with the exception of Bush v. Gore... of which Gore would have won the electoral college without voter suppression in Florida. So it's actually pretty good science despite the relative subjectivity of human patterning, because it deals with observing repeatable clearly defined phenomena over time. So even though he's not studying bacteria in a petri dish here... he is studying how human patterning generally works. Think of it more as a social science. I'd be curious if you could apply these qualifiers outside of the US context to predict head to head election outcomes in other representative democracies.

This post feels like it's coming from a place of pain... like the tonguing of a mouth wound. Consider deeper how it makes you feel that there are some women who exist who get a power boost from "simps" giving them money and dominating these men. And do you assume that all women are functioning that way? Is there as sense of feeling objectified and that you need to be a certain type of guy to not be taken advantage of that way? Is there a feeling of being powerless to women? Look past the triggering dynamic itself to see what you underlying fears, vulnerabilities, and pain are. Then, find the origin point... which likely has far more to do with childhood dynamics with our family of origin than it has to do with current-day male/female dynamics. It's just that sex/relationships/dating tend to be a very vivid projection screen for our deeper pain. Look back into the past at times where you felt powerless, dominated, used, objectified, etc. to find the origin point.

Thank you!

Someone who is in Stage Turquoise would look at the stage in development that a given society is at and choose whichever policies are most conducive of love, harmony, and happiness within that particular culture. So, if a Stage Purple tribe had a Stage Turquoise leader... they would make sure that the tribal customs, rituals, and rules are upheld for the sake of social cohesion... and to make sure the their moral leadership style reflected that. But in instances where there was leverage within that paradigm to influence the tribe in positive ways or discourage/outlaw things that caused harm to the tribe that are beyond the scope of the understanding within Stage Purple... they would make decisions either secretly or under the guise of a more Stage Purple framework to influence the tribe in positive ways while minimizing anything that threatens the fabric of social cohesion. And they would guard under lock and key any and all Stage Turquoise understandings that could muddle things up. If there was a Stage Turquoise leader leading a Stage Red society... they would have to develop the ability to be stoic and ruthless and to close their heart to those outside of their circle of concern... like a Shepard culls a lamb. And they would have to show up in a way that would be feared and respected. They would also have to have the bodily constitution and strength to be a warrior along with their Turquoise leading. And then, they would take care of the people who are under their leadership and dictate like an angry father the most healthy values that they can to those that are under their control. And to maintain social order, they would need to rule with an iron fist as there isn't a functional bottom-up mechanism for maintaining social cohesion. So, they'd have to engage in a lot of double think and be able to engage in Stage Red behavior from a Stage Turquoise viewpoint. Like if Buddha had to function as a warlord to serve the greater good and to minimize suffering as much as possible given the circumstances. If they are effective enough at this, Red will quickly turn Blue. If there was a Stage Turquoise leader of a Stage Blue society.... they would maintain the absolutist social practices of the Blue society. And they would encourage religious involvement and influence the religious leaders to focus mostly on the religious tenets that are about charity and avoiding doing things that harm other. And they would be very attuned to maintaining the social order. And they would always share their moral leadership messages through the lens of the rules and religion of the society. But as much as possible, they would encourage social cohesion and harmony. And they would also encourage some education slightly past the current paradigm... but never so much as to create unrest. And of course, any and all Stage Turquoise insights that could muddle up the social order would be kept locked away. But they may occasionally start encouraging some development into more individualistic Stage Orange perspectives, depending upon their assessment of the populace and where they are. In early, blue... it's best to keep it blue because it could devolve back into red. In late blue, you can afford a little science or a little rationality. If there was a Stage Turquoise leader of a Stage Orange society... they would temper the chaos of the expansion in Stage Orange by encouraging customs and spaces where individuals can come together as a collective. And they would fund sources of collective meaning to maintain some semblance of social cohesion within a very individual society. But they would focus far more towards education and helping all children experience maximum individuation of their potentials. And they would fund art/music/movies etc for the masses... that encourage individuality, rationality, and science... whilst also reconciling that there is a need to come together. They would separate church and state to ensure that Orange can continue progressing past blue. They would work slowly within the context of the bureaucratic system to ensure that the economy is functioning competitively while also (behind the scenes) tempering the influence that big business has on the government. And they would litmus test for how functional it would be to ban guns, and would if it's feasible within the culture of that social context. If there was a Stage Turquoise leader of a Stage Green society... they would work to ensure global cohesion between nations to work towards addressing collective species-wide issues. And they would fund education that helps Stage Green begin to understand where dissenting opinions on human rights come from, so that issues with human rights and those who oppose them can be addressed at the root instead of from a misunderstanding of the other person's "badness". And they would mostly keep in tune with Stage Green values but encourage the society to understand those values and the barriers to enacting them at a much deeper level.

"This idea of "integration" is very tricky. Integration does not mean there won't be trade-offs. I can integrate sense-making and pragmatism such that they work together, but not 100%. That's an important difference." My entire point is that pragmatism is necessary for sense-making. And if you are not pragmatic, you are definitionally NOT engaging in sense-making. And this quote showcases a misunderstanding of what integration entails and the underlying crux of my disagreement with your perspective. What you're talking about is balance. Imagine a see-saw that you have to stack bricks on. And you have only 11 bricks to stack. And on one side of the see-saw you have sense-making and on the other side of the see-saw you have pragmatism. And in the notion from your above quote, it's like 'If we add more weight to the pragmatic side of the seesaw, it will take away some weight from the sense-making side of the seesaw. The closest we can get to balance is 6 bricks one side and 5 bricks on the other. Either way, it's like pie and there are trade-offs where one will get in the way of the other. And wouldn't it be even better if we put most of the bricks on the sense-making side?! Of course, I see that we can't negate pragmatism altogether, but can't we at least stack 8 bricks on sense-making and 2 bricks on pragmatism?' In contrast, integration is where you take two opposites that then come together to create something similar to, different from, and greater than the original two polarities. So... truly integrating sense-making and pragmatism is both more pragmatic and makes more sense than either of the two polarities alone. And you can't have true sense-making or true pragmatism without the other side of spectrum integrated. All dichotomies work like this when integrated. It is similar to how discipline and freedom are necessary for the other to exist... or like how skepticism and open-mindedness are opposites but are actually one and the same if you practice them skillfully enough. Look up the meaning of "The Chariot" card in the Tarot... or the concept of "the sacred marriage" and "The divine child" as an archetype. You view pragmatism and sense-making as opposites that always clash or compete, where I view them as opposites that can either compete or integrate depending on how one approaches them. "You don't see the general populace as interested in deep sense-making, which makes advocating for it somewhat pointless." Having been a high school public school teacher and a substitute teacher working in classrooms from pre-k through 12th grade, it has given me experiences that have shown me that there is a huge variance of intelligence levels that span the entire spectrum. And school is like a microcosm of the future of adult society. And I have worked with students who could skate by on natural intelligence... and with very hardworking students that simply cannot understand the work no matter how hard they tried, just because their level of intellectual capacity is capped with regard to certain subjects. And my estimate is that only like 25% of people have the capacity to think deeply on politics and other philosophical topics. And that doesn't even get into the consideration of how interested a person is in politics... or how much time they have to pursue a deeper understanding of it. So, because you and I (and most others on this forum) are naturally brainy kids (because you have to be a brainy kid to enjoy Leo's channel)... we may have a tendency to be unintentionally intellectually elitist in assuming that 'If people just tried hard enough or valued sense-making in politics more, they could understand the complexities of politics.' But this would be like naturally athletic people, expecting people who aren't built that way to "just run faster" or "Just lift more weight". And for them to imagine a utopian future where everyone is an athlete. This is why I see your view-point as overtly idealistic. You over-estimate the collective's capacity to develop a deep intellectual level of understanding regarding politics. Since the dawn of civilization, humanity has operated through specialization. And this means that different people have different strengths and weaknesses in different areas. And it's the combination of both strengths and weaknesses that individuals have that make society run. Thus, the weakness of the individual and the strength of the individual integrates to create a stronger collective. So, it is not realistic to expect the majority of people to engage in deep intellectual work as that is just one type of specialization and will never be a default. "Such that you are no longer identify as a progressive, a conservative, a centrist, a meta-modernist or anything else. You are not on the political map anymore. And this will deeply improve your sense-making, such that you see things very few people will see." Perhaps for an individual person who is interested and able to think deeply about politics, it is good to detach from a political identity because it gives you intellectual flexibility... and to only use these labels as a means of coalescing and organizing with others to achieve certain pragmatic ends. For example, there are tons of very influential political people who believe that I shouldn't have any power at all. And there are tons of people that agree with them that I can see in every comment section I've ever been in. And I've done some very uncomfortable exploration of those perspectives by totally allowing myself to fully entertain them and consider them. And it's helped me learn a lot about the vulnerabilities that those viewpoints grow from, which in turn enables me to address these issues more effectively. And it has also helped me work through my own internalized misogyny by finding how these perspectives also live in me. So, that's been helpful for me... but without my intellectual/emotional bent, I would not be able to navigate such a treacherous descent into that collective wound and come out the other end better off than when I went in. So, I wouldn't open up that discussion publicly because it would normalize those viewpoints in the eyes of the average person. And it would give people (especially girls and women) a huge burdensome journey through the Leviathan of that wounding that most are very unlikely to be equipped to make sense of. So is there value in that for some people who are on a hardcore inner work journey? Absolutely. But it's not going to lead to good outcomes if this perspective is discussed by the masses, as it would not be understood and would shift the Overton Window. This is why certain knowledge has always been kept under lock and key except for those with the initiation into the mysteries. Wisdom can be dangerous in the ears of the unwisened. Now with the labels you mentioned, there is a lot of pragmatism behind why these labels exist, as it helps people join together in solidarity in a coalition to fight for certain policies. And that is something that cannot be done away with because people's interests and rights are things that must be fought for. And you need a spearhead (and the rest of the spear to make things happen.) And without this consideration, there is no politics beyond people in power running the table on those with none. There is only strength in numbers and labels help you coalesce in numbers... as do narratives and slogans. Also the reality is that, even if you slough off these labels, you're still going to have values that you hold. Like even if I didn't label myself as a progressive... I'm still not going to be okay with abortion bans, discrimination against minority groups, government enforced theocracy, or privatized health insurance... etc. These lines in the sand must be drawn, and that must be prioritized over some theoretically more conscious way of orienting to politics.

Such is the way of individuation, progression, and expansion... messy, chaotic, and polarizing... like giving birth. But expansion beyond the old paradigms is much better (in this particular instance) than the stagnation and "still-birthness" that would have ensued if our technologies, institutions, and economic patterns would have progressed into industrial and post-industrial levels of development... but our level of intellectual, behavioral, and moral development would have stayed operating off of the agrarian era adaptations. We would all be like cassette tapes, forcefully jammed into a cd player. Such is the life of the agrarian-minded conservative in a post-industrial society.