Peter Zemskov

Currently, there's a clear trend of rising authoritarianism around the world. In the West this can easily be seen in the increase in popularity of hard right populist parties and politicians within democratic countries, such as Trump in the US, AfD in Germany, National Rally in France, etc. The interesting part is that many people seem to be actively rooting against democracy in favour of a downright authoritarian right wing government that is going to uphold traditional values. While I think that the reduction of the living standard acts as a trigger, I also believe there's another deep underlying root cause to this problem that often goes unadressed: a lack of vision in western democracies. After we have been liberated from the old collective identities, we seem to be left in this nihilistic void with nothing to pursue, defend and fight for. As a result people feel extremely alienated, directionless and desperately cling to old identities, even if deep down they know that they're just constructions. They simply don't know what to do with their freedom and want to bow to some sort of strong ideology that is going to give them concrete instructions on how to live life. I think that in order to solve this crisis we need to create a new vision of where we are moving towards as a society, a new, higher consciousness identity that will give us a sense of direction. But how do we combine freedom with some kind of collective high consciousness identity? How can we obtain social cohesion without going back to reactionary brainwashing? What new forms of society should we strive for beyond liberal democracy in its current form?

And how can we implement spirituality at a societal level? I agree that spirituality is part of the solution, but practically speaking, what a truly spiritual society would look like for you?

Also, at a practical level how do we deal with all those stage blue people in advanced societies? As we are moving towards green they seem to feel more and more left out and betrayed as they no longer have anything to cling to. I don't really see a way to integrate them and that's a huge social problem

I agree with Nilsi on this, stage green values are based on the deconstruction and criticism of the old oppressive identities, but offer little proactive meaning. Sure, we need to create a fair, peaceful, free and equal society, but what do we do after we are free and equal? Freedom is only as good as what we make of it and if we don't have any vision of what to do with it, we will fall back into our old toxic ways. The rub here is how to combine freedom with some sort of identity and social cohesion. Even though individuals should be able to chose their own identities and meaning, there are clearly good and bad ways of doing it. Freedom shouldn't lead us to the ever increasing atomization, like what is happening now, but we also can't impose a single ideology on everybody either. What I feel we need is a more inclusive, cosmopolitan kind of identity that is going to apply soft cultural pressure on individuals so they become more conscious. Nobody should force you to be any particular way, but at the same time you should know what's possible. For example in our current society, even though we are free to chose our meaning, there's a cultural expectation that we should focus on our materialistic desires. Nothing prevents us you from going higher, but it isn't really acknowledged as something worthwhile. Because of this, most people don't even know that it's a possibility. This is what a higher consciousness society should focus on changing.

After reading Lord of the Rings I got a sense that it's a metaphor for enlightenment. I am not sure but some things just don't make other sense. J.R.R. Tolkien was an intelligent writer and I wonder if he knew about enlightenment. What are your thoughts on this topic?

I'm not very flexible but don't have any flexibility problems either. And I don't have any spine problems. If it's kundalini than how much more time will it last and what is going to happen when it fully awakens?

Almost a year now I'm having weird body movements during meditation that sometimes make it very hard for me to concentrate. First I thought that its just my bad posture but then I understood that it's something else. In one session I had my body leaning towards one side and then revearsing and leaning to the opposite side. That can't happen because of bad posture or muscle relaxation. What happens is that my body and my head start to lean or twist towards one side and this causes a lot of discomfort and sometimes even strong muscle pain. Sometimes I literally had my head twisting backwards and had to stop meditating because I felt as though my neck was going to break if it twisted further back. Usually its not that bad but still it makes meditation feel like torture. For example today my body was leaning to the left pretty badly and the only thing that I could think of was when is the session going to end. I couldn't meditate properly because of that. Does any of you have anything similar? What is it and what do you think is the best way for me to deal with it?

Easy to say but its extremely hard to meditate when you're twisted in souch a way that your back hurts as though somebody stabbed you in the muscle. I literally have back pain for 15 minutes after a meditation session. But what is positive is that my willpower has grown enormously because of those sensations. I feel that i'm a lot more resistant to suffering than before. Also it sort of deapend my meditation. In those rare days when I have less movement than normal i'm meditating a lot deeper than I did before because now i'm acostumed to meditate in "hard" conditions

Well kinda yeah. But I meditate usually about 20 min. I could've meditated for an hour easily if it wasn't for those sensations. Now about the technique. I think I gain a lot from this do nothing meditation because out of many techniques that I tried it works the best for me.

I also have tickling sensations in my shoulders sometimes. But I never had any emotional breakthroughs after mediation. Well I had it once after the first deep meditation but since then (2 years have past) I never had any.

I use the do nothing technique

I'm 15 years old and my dream when i'm going to grow up is to have an isolated place somewhere in nature to which I can come to rest of civilization. I don't want to live isolated but I certainly want to have an isolated place where I can go to and where nothing will distract or worry me. My question is really simple. What are the best natural places I can go to live in, in europe? The only thing that I want from that place is isolation, lots of greenary and it has to be in europe. Those of you who travel a lot can you advise me something?

I know. But there's a problem. Some baltic people really dislike russians (for a good reason though) and as a russian I don't feel that its safe. Normally people who live in rural areas are less concious and they may hate me because i'm a russian. I heard stories that houses in small villages have been burned by the hateful locals when the owner left. I just won't be able to leave my house and go.

I'm working hard on not being envious and comparing myself to others anymore but my parents enforce the envy that I have towards other people and it make the job nearly impossible for me. They always compare me to other people and that sometimes makes me very envious. For example they always compare my marks to my friends marks and encourage me to compete with them and when I tell them that I don't want to compare myself with other they call me a looser and think that it's because i'm afraid of competition. It's really hard to get rid of my envy and self comparison in this situation so what would you recomend?

I think that that's the most concious way of dealing with it. But it's emotionally very hard not to get affected by what they say

In my experience competition often creates envy. Compering yourself to others creates an unhealthy self esteem that is dependent on how you match in comparison to others (and not how you really are) which inevitably creates envy. Also competition is a low conciousness thing because it's really your ego which wants to be better than others.

That's interesting. They won't listen to me if I just tell them my opinion because they'll dismiss it as being an excuse for my laziness but if I'll teel them some quotes from important people I think they're going to listen...

They are. Naturally i'm not an envious person but they force me to be one. It's a problem of giving to much attention to their comparisons of me to other people

It's true for my dad. He tells me with pride stories from his childhood when he got the best marks and always puts himself as an example that I should follow. He just doesn't understand that I don't have the desire to compete with anybody. My dad always felt pride in being better than other people. My mom is different though. She's a typical stage orange person who values success over everything else. She doesn't compare herself with anybody but she does compare me to others. She wants me to live up to her expactations and always tries to put me in a rat race.

In my meditation practice I faced a pretty annoying problem. I noticed that I can't meditate productively after not getting enough sleep the night before. And the problem is that even if I sleep 7 hours I can't meditate without facing sleepiness/drowsiness problems. To properly meditate I need to sleep at least 8 hours but my life conditions don't always permit me to sleep those 8 hours. It's really annoying when I haven't slept 8 hours one night and my meditation session gets ruined. And the fact that I'm a night owl adds on top of that. Give me some advice on how I can meditate better when I hadn't the opportunity to sleep 8 hours.

I face that problem too. It's really a shame when such an effortless thing as meditation starts feeling as an obligation. I think the problem is in moralization. We shouldn't say we should meditate

Thanks for the advice. Really helped me not to doze off today

The same happened to me

Hell yeah! Ego is not bad. It's bad if it controls you. Ego is there for your survival and your job is not to eliminate it entirely but to get complete control over it.

I already did it and had the same thing. But it affected only my good hand. By the way the experience was mad. The spasm was really strong so even if I pushed my hand into normal position it would get twist back up