Huginn

I've a ton of experience with trying to get rid of my myopia naturally. It's a work in progress, although admittedly I haven't stuck to my routines that much as of late. I believe wholeheartedly that it's possible to reverse it, but it takes time (may be years) and implementation of good habits. My primary source of information comes from the blog of Jake Steiner (http://endmyopia.org/), great guy. Before checking out his stuff, I tried some gimmicky things that didn't really work that well. His stuff is based on good research. So since using info from his blog on April this year, I dropped from -3.0 diopters to (nearly) -2.5 diopters. It's an unusually slow beginning for me because I already was using different glasses for closeup vision and distance vision.

@Torkys I prefer the simplicity of Vimwiki, and keeping the wiki easily accessible as plain text files. Even if the plugin somehow breaks, I got my files without needing to fish them out of the browser storage. Also, just require being able to use my favorite text editor locally. Vimwiki doesn't have drawing options, but I just did a bit of Vim scripting so that I can make a link that opens a new/existing drawing in MyPaint, a dedicated drawing software. Text coloring is just done with some Vim plugin for Markdown files. It has infinite notebook depth too (as many text files as you can fit into your file system). So, I'm a bit of a special case when it comes to requirements. If Laverna works for you, that's that.

@Girzo Same here. When I bring consciousness fully to the food, there seems to be more of it in front of me. More consciousness, more food somehow.

Not sure what you mean by unconsciously, but I've been trying to be more conscious and present while eating. Interestingly, a song of some sorts starts to automatically play in my head when I eat, but I try to listen to my chewing sounds etc. instead. Also when I eat, I usually try to do just that and nothing else. Since changing to a healthier diet, it's much easier because the food just tastes so much better so I want to experience every part of the deliciousness.

Thanks for the video Leo. It motivates me to be a more avid note-taker than I have been. Not sure if there are any people here who would even benefit from this, but if you at the slim chance happen to bother with Linux, powerhouse text editors like Vim and some configuring, there's a really nice plugin called Vimwiki. It has everything that OneNote software has (at least from what I saw in the video), except maybe displaying a picture on the open page, instead you'd click on a link to open the picture in your preferred image viewer or editor, as per your customization. I could talk forever on the benefits of this approach, from open source/free software to practical matters of saving the commonplace book in the form of simple text files and being able to edit super fast without needing a mouse. If not handy with Linux or Vim, this approach has the cost of time for skill building in this area over a fair stretch of time though. You could look at it like expanding your Cyber-Consciousness. My consciousness may be low, but at least I got that!

@MiracleMan What about coconut products for fat? I like to use some combination of vegetables and fat in the morning of as high a quality I can get. Just get a vegetable of some sort and smear some coconut oil on it. Low sugar and fat gives high satiety. I would try out some other kind of fat, but can't find anything else here besides olive oil, and that's too liquidy to smear on anything. You could make a vegetable soup like in one of Leo's videos, with olive oil in it, that is, if you can tolerate (proper, high quality) olive oil.

I've been thinking of making a regular journal here, but I'm not quite ready as of this date. I'll make a separate one for that. I will write in this journal whenever I have thoughts and insights I feel a deep need to just put out there to the world. ---- I went through one of my phases where I just wanted to watch some mindless movie without as much low consciousness material as possible. I noticed Moana, a new disney movie. Great, I thought, a new movie with some straight forward hero's journey. In just the first parts of it, I found myself tearing up. It was something about all those tan, healthy looking people living happily in a tropical paradise. It was all so magical! I felt drawn to it with something like wild abandonment. I believe it has to do with my real human values I've come more and more in touch with and the vision I've built around it: A home in beautiful tropical nature, with a body, tanned and healthy from the plentitude of sunshine and juicy and delicious natural real food. In a community of other similarly healthy people, accepted, loved, respected. A gorgeous woman to love to the ends of the world. I think I also teared up because I've been eating natural, real food for most of the past half a year which is increasingly becoming healthier. I feel somehow more connected to nature because of it. It leaves me wanting to feel more of it, to revel in my own nature as a human, connect to the earth, eat from the earth, ravish women, eat, sleep, fuck, repeat to BE ME AT THE ROOT and throw away all else. I cried because I've never experienced that kind of absolute freedom and abandon and I want it at the core. Sweet, sweet nature, I want to connect to you!

@pluto Okay. I don't have anything against fruit, but in my experience, the insulin drop I experience soon after eating fruit makes me want to devour something probably as little as half an hour after, when I rather want to be satiated for longer. For that reason, I've eaten my fruits in my latest meals of the day when I've already been largely satiated by my main meal. It could be though that I've just not eaten enough fruit in my meals to get to that satiety level. 500 - 1000 calories of fruit seems much higher than I've tried in a single meal. I might give it a go sometime and see how I respond.

@pluto Don't those fruits make you hungry soon after? Insulin spike and drop and all.

In the mornings, I've started drinking matcha tea with coconut milk and some MCT oil (Capric/Cprylic tryglicerites) and ceylon cinnamon. Just improvising something as a substitution for Bulletproof coffee, since I'm not sure about good coffee bean and grass-fed butter sources for it. I think it's a nice ritual. It can kill cravings for breakfast so sometimes I don't have any breakfast. If I feel like having some, I may get myself a chunk of rutabaga and smear a bit of coconut oil on it. Or just eat some vegetable with coconut oil. I have a rather big main meal in the afternoon so other meals are usually rather small.

@dustylocks Makes sense. I also donated my DNA for research purposes a while back, so I could check to see what they've found so far. Blood tests and genetic testing.

@Yellow Funny coincidence. Yes, I guess I'll look into that. I can list a number of possible hypotheses from my personal research and hand them over. Based on that, they might make the appropriate tests. So to answer my question, I guess a blood test is just staple?

Don't they test for different things in different blood tests? I'm not sure if they would test for all the "essential" stuff I'm after. I could talk to a doctor, but I'm a bit skeptical as to whether their advice and definition of "essential" would be what I'm looking for. Similar to what you say, I get the impression from my sources that the run of the mill doctors will have a very different approach than what I'm after: the more functional medicine preventative and natural approach. I could try to find a functional medicine doctor, but I'm not optimistic about finding one in a small town in Norway. I might check out those possibilities anyway, just to see. So what tests I know of is a blood test and hair tissue mineral analysis. Maybe both are perfectly valid in testing the areas where they overlap. I've no idea of the advantages or disadvantages of each. Guess I'll have to do more research on this. I never eat sugar, drink alcohol or eat dairy. But I'm not entirely sure whether I still have emotional blockages. I've definitely cleared up a lot over the past year or so. I'm not in contact with people almost at all though, so that might be something. Loneliness, even though I don't 'feel' it very keenly. Some anxiety maybe over a generally uncertain future at the moment. I've just become pretty good at regulating such things with meditation and other routines so I don't feel they're an issue. Could be I'm not 'releasing' those emotions properly but rather blocking them. Might be something to look into.

Similar to the stance of many here, I believe focusing on yourself and your actions is the way to change things in the end (in the way you really want to anyway). When you think and act in alignment with your true values, it creates a kind of gravitation of the world towards your ideal. We can compare that approach with coming up with various social techniques and devices to change people. Which approach is more effective in bringing about your ideal? Here's why I think focusing on your thoughts and actions is better than changing people directly. When you try to change people directly, it puts you in an antagonistic position. They are wrong, and you are right. You need to set them right. How is that going to make you think? How are your thoughts going to effect your actions? Will you still be in alignment with your values? I believe not. You might change things, but the way you brought about the change probably undermines the very values you're trying to uphold. In contrast, focusing on thinking right and acting right keeps you in alignment with your values. It doesn't mean you aren't actively changing the (seemingly material) world, because acting and thinking necessarily does so. In effect, focusing on your thoughts and actions automatically shapes the world without needing to think about it. You are just thinking about doing things right. Does this make sense? And yes, this reasoning is highly influenced by the law of attraction.

@Scholar, yes forgiving does sound more enlightened. Thanks for your insight. What I want would be in accordance with my values: Truth, Love and the cooperation of humanity to reach its fullest potential in health, consciousness and so on. War and conflict seems to undermine that peaceful state of affairs. I can see from a high consciousness perspective how it is necessary though for harmony, as you say. My thought is that it's just difficult for me to keep up that perspective when I'm engaged in conflict most of the time, thinking what the adversary would do, defending, attacking etc. I mean, I'm just doing InfoSec research at the moment, but still this militaristic kind of thinking is necessary there. My guess is that I need to grow more spiritually to maintain my perspective and not fall into the "the world is dark and gloomy" kind of mentality. @Haumea, enlightening read, thanks. I like the perspective of humanity as evolving, and while our psychology is yet imperfect there must be war and conflict at one time or another. The trick is to be on the side that is more likely to nurture this ongoing evolution.

@ScholarThis seems like the right direction to take on their part. They know that the real power struggle is within people's minds and the information exchange between them However, it only 'seems' like the right direction. This is something I think about a lot in connection with my purpose. I really want to raise awareness of the power imbalances of information exchange that still exist. We made the Internet, but the way we communicate has ways to go still, and needs to evolve to really empower each human being. I've surmised this change can only happen with raised awareness/consciousness in order to become aware of how information affects us and how the information we put out there affects others. Notice the effects of that Anonymous video above. They talk about meditation and self-awareness, but the frame in which it is mentioned indicates War: "We are the oppressed, THEY are the enemy. We must FIGHT back. We do not forget, and we do not forgive." Maybe this kind of negative motivation is what works to get people moving: "AAh GRR must go meditate to show 'em!". I have my doubts however. The "We vs. Them" mentality. the division and the unwillingness to forgive and the inability to see Them as evil human beings and not as anything other than a personal threat. That low consciousness mentality itself is going to perpetuate the War. You can be doing half-assed meditation and no real self-inquiry and contemplation and still be left with that mentality. It's this very strong desire for power that motivates such a person. It's not going to cease just like that when power is gained. In essence, that person will become the Them. So, to compare them to @Leo Gura. Leo uses positive motivation. He's offering you the good, happy, inspired life. The focus is on you. You're the "evil one". Well, he tells you negative things about our culture etc., but the overall impression is that you are responsible and must develop yourself first. I believe that is a better approach. I'll end with this. I'm an InfoSec guy. Essentially the whole InfoSec field (Hacking, Digital Forensics, Information Warfare, Psychological Warfare etc.) is about war and conflict, gaining advantage, defense and attack. When trying to come up with my values some time ago, I actually listed "power", in the sense of "power over others/opposition". With serious self-inquiry, I removed it and added "love", in the sense oneness, cooperation etc. Now the fact that the InfoSec field exists solely due to human conflict and power struggle makes it hard to align with my values. Being in that environment feels as though it's wearing me down, getting me to think thoughts of the world as a dark place. I've tried to come up with a better picture of the field to keep in my mind, like not making the threat personal, but rather as some "evil" or "immaturity" possessing the adversary. But it seems rather hard to maintain. I've thought "should I change to a more loving field?", but then I say "should the antelope bare its neck to the lion?". To live a high consciousness life, do you need to drop all your weapons and defenses? To turn the other cheek all the time? Well, that's how "evil" wins. I guess I'll just need to take care to fight right and try not to let the conflict get to me somehow. It seems Ghandi was a fine information warrior.

To me, it's a series of closely packed low-consciousness emotional climaxes. When I quit watching, I can't help but feel that the current reality is much less exciting, even bleak. It's the same reaction I get to online gaming. I watched episodes 1 - 5 of the current season. It took 1 or 2 days I think to let my subconscious detox enough that my focus was not as easily pulled towards GoT thoughts. I decided not to watch more until the season is complete for this reason. So, what's wrong with it is that it's very distracting, even more so beyond the hours that it takes to watch it. But ... I keep the shows there for "one of those days". I want to see where the story ends eventually. One can but hope that there'll be some positive message at the end of this all.

This reminds me of a stage I reached in my contemplations. In essence, I realized Truth was my highest value, because all subsequent considerations are based upon it. So, then comes truth seeking. The world that is being experienced is, in the now. Now, what am I to do with that? What is my purpose and nature and what is my reason for acting? That becomes a central question. Where should the answer come from? It must come from within the being that I seem to inhabit, otherwise the answer comes from the things that are not this being I seem to be, like other people and culture. This nature just comes to me intuitively and I articulate this nature in the form of values, which in turn affect my concrete life purpose that I formulate according to those values and other factors that seem right. You seem to have identified one vague value here "the best I possibly can for me and others". Hope this is of some use to you.

Thanks. I already got this book but have yet to read it. Good to have further validation from someone more experienced.

Do you have a life purpose? I think it's important to have that prioritized over relationships to begin with.

I'm wondering if this is the same for men and women. Having read Deida's The Way of the Superior Man, which basically says that the man's priority is his purpose but the woman's is a great relationship, I wonder. As a man, I understand that having a good life purpose to follow is important for happiness. Would the same apply to women and pursuing great relationships? Not that they'd need a relationship to be happy, but maybe that's where they're more apt to get their drive? I don't know, but that book makes me wonder.

You're welcome.

Well, from my perspective, the general would be to envision clearly what you want in your stay there. Then let it guide you in writing down all the things you need to do to achieve it. If you're unsure about something, get the right information to be more sure. When you get confident in your list of things to do, you may be surprised it's much simpler than you thought. Such clarity will help in getting over any remaining uncertainty and fear. Start with the things you need just to survive, such as papers, finances, housing, plan B to retreat back to the family if things go wrong for some reason. Then you can add nice to haves. Personally, when I moved myself, I did think of the worst that could happen, like Joseph mentioned, without having a name for it. It was kind of like "So the worst thing is that I'll die. Spending my life like I have been up till now indefinitely is worse though. Therefore, I'll just go die then. Might be interesting.". So, it's I suppose easier if you're motivated at least to a similar degree. Something I wished I had done before going is to devise a clear plan to learn the language. Specifically regular writing practice. Reading alone is not enough to level up to speaking confidently. But maybe you know Korean already. Want to know something more specific? Ask away.

Name: Anonymous for now (If found out, I'd be very curious about how it was done ) Age: 28 Gender: Male Location: Reykjavík/Iceland or Norway Occupation: Information Security master's student Marital Status: Single Kids: No Hobbies: Personal development and enlightenment, Healthy living (food etc.), Learning, Almost anything concerning information systems (human minds/computers) and their informational interconnectedness, concerning information/psychological warfare, privacy and things of that nature. I can say that I started dabbling in self development since I started my first "real" job as a software engineer in 2014 after I finished my computer science degree. It was due to a growing dissatisfaction with my job in the role of the obedient code monkey cog with no real sense of purpose. Additionally, I was and had been an online roleplaying addict for about 10 years since being a teenager to the point of alienating myself from my friends. I had developed a very grim view of reality and people, leading to extremely anti-social behavior, neuroticism, inhibition of personality and what have you. I had been trying out meditation in the years before (I've just always been interested in exploring the capabilities of my mind), but it was very dry without a heart so to speak, I remember. At least meditating helped me see how my online gaming affected and distracted my mind). So I felt something needed to change, and quit my job and moved to Norway to do my master's degree in 2015. Of course, even if it felt like a fresh start, my problems stayed with me. I was always analysing myself and my behavior, trying to fix my social and women issues with stuff online (conscious wanting to connect, but subconscious was like "nope, people are bad, not worth the time and pain"). So the summer of 2016, on Youtube, I ran into Burt Harding. I was impressed with his stuff, but was still just dabbling, not looking at the root problem, then Youtube suggested Leo's channel to me. Now I'm not quite the same person. I've now read and implemented to various degrees the solutions of many of the books on the book list, mostly just this year (thanks to a course-light semester). Then I just joined this forum now, having become convinced I'll get further with social support. Personal challenges I've overcome: Started living on my own in another country Quit online gaming for good Overcame porn addiction Cleaned up my diet quite a bit (still refining) Learned latin dancing to get out of comfort zone Overcame a lot of emotional immaturity, neuroticism, egotism and self-consciousness (i.e. others-consciousness). What I'm working on now (in process of prioritizing some): Master's Thesis in connection with life purpose Starting a business / securing income, in connection with life purpose Overcoming fear of initiating talks with strangers in unconventional places (not official parties etc.) Become more confident in speaking Norwegian Getting to my ideal body composition Curing my autoimmune symptoms Eliminating my myopia naturally and gain 20/20 vision Making my first awareness raising / educational youtube video