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@kuwaynej In personal development, you will be in constant cycles of crisis and bliss

If things go right the future will keep on advancing and our understanding of the world will become more and more complete. Some people say we can expect a technological singularity where knowledge and technology will change the world so drastically we will not be able to keep up with the change. I think we already see that many people (especially older people) are slowly falling outside the technological era. The world has drastically changed since the industrial revolution and information exchange is at unbelievable rates (will reach around 2.7 Zetabytes till 2020!). We practically created as much information in the 21th centuary as in entire human existence, maybe even more. Big data will eventually reveal many underlying mechanics of all interactions of things. Machine learning will become more and more precise in predicting the future, weather, population growth, basically everything you can imagine. The question is, what will all this knowledge do with the human psychology? If you can predict your entire life, the mystical experience of new experiences fades slowly away. Reality becomes more and more solid and imagination which is our biggest driving force shrinks. What would you do if you know what most of your entire life would look like? The surprise element is what makes me really wonder but if all becomes so obvious then what is there to dream about? The other side of the coin would be a life where you know nothing, not even instincts and would die pretty quickly due to survival reasons. The middle of ignorance or not-knowing and knowing everything is the golden zone where you have enough ability to stay alive, build a life with some certainty but can always be amazed with new things. What do you guys think? Will all this new knowledge about psychological/physical patterns or cycles make the world a much better palace or is ignorance really bliss? I like knowledge more than anyone I know but also see the major downsides people don't really grasp yet. The world is a weird place haha..

@ajasatya That's great to hear man. Follow your bliss #Hippie

You will do more good with the guitar than with second option. Because the issue is never material. It's psychological and ultimately spiritual. People don't need your money, they need your passion, love, and happiness. If you earn shitloads of money and give it away to charity, you will actually contribute evil to the world. Because you're disconnected from yourself. When you're disconnected from yourself, you're a devil, no matter how much money you give to charity. Once you've betrayed yourself, you will certainly betray others. Because your true sin was giving into ego, giving into fear. That's the reason you betrayed yourself in the first place, and that pattern will only continue. Besides which, the world is perfect as it is, and doesn't need you to fix it. There is nothing you can do to make the world better. It's already perfect. So relax and follow your bliss. Your guilt is contributing to the suffering of the world. Guilt is a low-consciousness motivation with leads to evil. So do the world a favor and be happy, if you dare. How's that for a counter-intuitive move?

That's brilliant. Do you mind if I ask you a couple more questions as I think you may be able to help, but I'll make it just this message so as not to take your thread off course? My background, I work long hours but read this forum and some snippets of books all the time. I'm a slow reader though so that book has taken all year. I have to keep putting it down each paragraph and think about it. I also suffer tiredness so I only get about one shot a day at meditation about 11 am after a couple of coffees. Any other time I fall asleep. (I fall asleep on bus, in waiting room, anywhere). But I've had a couple of mind expanding things occur which are really weird and 1 time I found complete bliss which was amazing. I am also getting real euphoria listening to music as a side product of all this. I also completely learn how to become completely aware in my garden which is fantastic. Now to take this further I tried self enquiry. The type where you analyse questions, I just don't get. I'm waiting for a voice to come back to me with the answers and none does. If I'm supposed to think up an analytical answer to the question, then I have no way of confirming it's accuracy and I could be inventing answers that are simply wrong. So I switched to the other type of self enquiry (don't know where I read about this) where you ask "who am I", and "who is it that is having this thought", and similar questions. After about 15 minutes I started feeling real sick and my mouth was filling with saliva. I thought it was a glass wall I needed to go through so kept pushing it but then fatigue and boredom also crept in and after 5 or 6 pushes I was thwarted and had to stop. But before I did stop my questions turned to mumble, like not of any language. Weird hey? I just wondered if you knew where was the best direction to go next, what with the difficulty I have meditating and my confusion over self enquiry. Any thoughts at all are really appreciated!

@Callum A." I took nndmt without having any prior knowledge of it. I had no experience with eastern spirituality or meditation. I was an atheist at the time though I was raised catholic. When I took the dmt, I went though all the normal stages of dmt and was completely convinced that I had died and was on the other side. I was freaking the fuck out. There were a lot of amazing visuals. But I kept trying to think of my home and my family and my familiar settings. Through force of will I brought myself back in to normal earth world for a few moments, and was panicking "holy shit!" "holy shit, I'm dying!" . Someone I was with said "it's ok". In that moment I intuited that I had no where else to go, but to go within. So in that moment I directed my mind to go within my self. In that moment I was transported to a realm made of white light. There was a being that was radiating light standing right in front of me with a rainbow aura looking down on me and smiling and I was instantly filled with the most overwhelming amounts of love, compassion, warmth, comfort, safety, bliss, and peace. All fear and discomfort was completely and utterly dissolved in this experience. It was incredibly crystal clear and realistic."

@BeginnerActualizer Im gonna bring in a little knaawledge that I accumulated about the energy in your body, emotions and chakra system. Base line is this. Whenever you feel continuous lasting dystatisfaction, your emotional system is out of wack. You have repressed trauma stored in your body. You can look at it as mood being amost physiological rather than "mental" (whatever that would mean). Mood is a biological addiction in your body. Why? You have experienced trauma in your past, situations that were emotionally distressing, but you didn't allow yourself to express the emotion properly. It got stored within your nervous system, and blocked the energy flow which would bring clarity, and underlying happiness that comes with being aligned with reality. Emotionally and energetically you are living a fragment of what you're capable of as a human being. Bring in the chakra system. What you wanna focus here on is the first 4 chakras - starting from the top - heart - solar plexus - sacral - root Once you cleanse all of those, not only you gain clarity, but you will as well gain the ability to integrate your "lower-self" (which you can see as the manifestation of the energy of the first 3 chakras) into enlightenment work and wisdom. How - not that complex really, the hard part is sticking with it because it is a lenghty process. Use the following techniques: - Pranic/Abdominal breathing - talking therapy - mindfulness meditation - emotional release techniques, from body-work to yoga, exercise >> remember, always have the intention to release trauma, and the right technique will come to you in time what is the saying.... "teacher comes, when student is ready"?? something like that =D. This is just a quick summary, do more research on this, watch Leo's videos on emotions and EQ, read up on chakras and emotional repression, there is some great stuff out there, recently I posted on this forum a topic with a video "Shadow-work meets biology", look it up. Remember, your base-line is contentment. Our bodies are hard-wired for bliss. Shit just got in the way.

This is not coming from any school of thought or theory, but this is my experience. I took nndmt without having any prior knowledge of it. I had no experience with eastern spirituality or meditation. I was an atheist at the time though I was raised catholic. When I took the dmt, I went though all the normal stages of dmt and was completely convinced that I had died and was on the other side. I was freaking the fuck out. There were a lot of amazing visuals. But I kept trying to think of my home and my family and my familiar settings. Through force of will I brought myself back in to normal earth world for a few moments, and was panicking "holy shit!" "holy shit, I'm dying!" . Someone I was with said "it's ok". In that moment I intuited that I had no where else to go, but to go within. So in that moment I directed my mind to go within my self. In that moment I was transported to a realm made of white light. There was a being that was radiating light standing right in front of me with a rainbow aura looking down on me and smiling and I was instantly filled with the most overwhelming amounts of love, compassion, warmth, comfort, safety, bliss, and peace. All fear and discomfort was completely and utterly dissolved in this experience. It was incredibly crystal clear and realistic. I don't know how it would apply to lsd, but I could posit the not dogma guidance of directing your mind to go within yourself.

A little background...I'm 23, live in England and work for the national health service (tax funded) in blood sciences. We basically run blood tests to help aid doctors with diagnosis and treatment of patients. The government in this country is currently conservative and funding to public healthcare is insufficient. Our lab doesn't have enough staff to meet current work demands and budget is very tight so new staff won't be recruited anytime soon. I'm just an assistant at the moment and I've always undervalued my own capabilities because society always basically told me I was worthless lol. But recently i've started to think for myself and work hard because I refuse to let people die because of this abyssmal staffing situation. I care about the work, i work overtime for free because I'm unable to get it paid due to shitty budget. People look at me like I'm fucking weird doing that, I didn't realise how cynical people truely are.. But it's not their fault. They think I'm trying to prove something to them or I'm just a screw loose... But I'm just sticking to my principles and trying to make as big a difference as I'm able. I care so much about all of the staff in our team, they're all my friends and I care about them dearly. I tried to make them believe in themselves more but I ended up offending a whole host of people. After escaping the box and seeing how fucking dispirited and insecure all my friends were people I care about... People I looked up to even. It just shook me up i don't know. I had a bit of an existential crisis and felt like I wanted to go back to the old perspective I had, it was just a lot to take in... Ignorance is bliss and all that. I went to seek advice from who I thought was the wisest person in the lab and basically self destructed... I said... "You're secure in yourself right? I've gained some confidence for the first time in my life and my perception has been enhanced so dramatically.... The world is so much worse off than I realised before and I feel like I'm loosing my fucking mind but schizophrenics usually don't question their sanity so much right????" A complete rookie mistake spouting this shit so openly, I don't blame them for thinking I'm crazy lol.That's how i'd react to what I said too prior to all this happening. Idk I've been very unfiltered recently since I stopped feeling judgement as viscerally. They have a duty of care and I don't imagine they would let a "psychotic" individual perform work that has a significant impact on patients health if mistakes are made. Anyways I'm trying to maintain motivation and pour my free time into learning the craft but it all seems like wasted effort if they're just going to fire me for insanity anyways. I'm not giving up though, they haven't fired me yet but they're all very wary of me. But yeah the past few days have been a bit of a rollercoaster for my esteem and my esteem is totally affecting my behaviour and it appears to be affecting the way I speak/sound subconsciously. I basically wanna appear normal for a while to avoid getting fired from the job I love but whenever I do feel good about myself people see it as "abnormal behaviour". Also I'm sour about the fact I fucked up and damaged my relationship with all of my colleagues/friends. Does esteem affect your behaviour dramatically or is this just my own complex. I suppose most of you are a bit more grounded than me, but I'm quite new to all this and I still undervalue myself and berate myself in my head a lot lol. I've blamed a lot of my behaviour on chronic sleep deprivation lol. Anyways I appreciate the response, sorry about the word salad.

Hi, I have a situation that's causing me a lot of uncertainty I'd love some advice from anyone. Im in my final year of high school. Through the life purpose course what kept coming up is acting, the times in my life I've enjoyed the most I've been doing this. The problem is the advice from nearly everyone around me seems to be do not do this. I know everyone has fears, but it genuinely feels like if I follow my passion and pursue acting I could be in serious trouble. It's one of the hardest careers to finance takes a minimum of 9 years to be successful and that's working minimum wage jobs and long nights to finance it I've never had to be independent before so to have to go straight to hussling etc seems overwhelming. I'm scared I'll chase this than completely fuck up my chance at a solid job by chasing a passion and not being able to support myself financially, than wasting all this time while everyone around me gets university degrees for stable jobs. There seems to be no answer anywhere for this people just say 'follow your passion', how do I do this while not messing things up?

I'm also open to enhancing my meditation in a natural way! I want to use my meditation to deepen my mental state or have altered states or have this deep bliss or this spontaneous fit of laughter! I want to be more experimental meditation and i've been spending this week and the past few weeks doing guided meditation but I want to take my meditation to deeper levels and to achieve the peak experience and flow states and where I behave spontaneously and authentically. I've been drinking hot lemon tea and peppermint tea and oolong tea while meditating because it feels deeply relaxing!

Traditionally, the end-goal of human life is considered to be liberation. Where the word liberation essentially means end of suffering, unlimited freedom, unlimited choices, and eternal bliss. More specifically, it is end of the cycles of birth and death of "individuated consciousness" (Jeev). The latter means not much for me from an experiential point of view, but I can see how that can bring on eternal bliss. But I'm not very sure, not really convinced It seems to me that ignorance and suffering, bondage etc are just phenomenal (illusory), and its the Ego (lower mind) that wants to avoid it. Isn't the consciousness already free? Any thoughts?

Sage like Life Version 1 (hardcore version) Ramana Maharshi style... Or Jesus? Buddha... That kind of guys... Everyone calls you lazy, hates on you for years, you attain enlightenment and... Bliss out! Then you develop deep self mastery and become a teacher experiencing true worship from you drop out of nowhere disciples. + supermind or clear light whatchamacallit, perfection, edge of human experience and self mastery - (highened mortality) bad finances and health, you won´t reach a really broad audience (unless your disciples do the marketing for you and create a youtube channel or somethin´), no paper written qualifications therefore no status in the mainstream sense (might stop many people from taking you serious) Sage like life Version 2 making a living while nearby working on enlightenment, on deepening and making it constant. Doing research, gain insights and then write books (have you noticed how many sages are authors?!), maybe give seminars or do arts.... + you will have a social presence, reach and inluence many, you will be able to consider the multiple perspectives that out of ongoing discussion with others you will have access to, your studies will materially supported, there will be room for all kinds of relationships if wished - you will not have much time for really intense and close teaching (unless you get paid for it maybe), you will ahve to keep a sense or function of self and personality, you will be very surrounded by peoples suffering, your spiritual practises might suffer under your bussiness or family or whatever responsibilities, you will have to handle critics and competition Sage like life Version 3 the scientist sage, life devotion to a double life where you study similar or very related but seemigly never unifiable aspects or functions of consciouness in a spiritual and a scientific context/understanding. Your bread and butter is both meditation and testing hypothesis... On the one hand you embrace the state of not knowing and on the other you constantly expore and try to understand what does not seem to be understandable. You get enlightened sometime between earning diplomes, writing and reading papers... + gaining an audience won´t be that hard (unless your theories are crappy), perspectival exchange will be an everyday phenomenon, you might actually discover something that might spark great change in the world or at least be qualitative considerable knowledge and food for thought for others... - you will be surrounded by knowledgegraph phanatics, especially naive realists like no where else, you might get very stressed, you might understand the world but go crazy. Time will always be against you. You will be alone. The spiritual people will call you a materialist and the scientific people will call you a mystic... Well okay, who cares about that... Okay, I´m tired... YOU tell me where the heck balance is supposed to be found in this opportunity mess.

Why? Well, Ralph, from Infinite Waters, explains it. I posted this in another thread. What he said here makes sense to me. Leo also explains... When you experience Infinity, you might have noticed that you're left with a huge residue of bliss or "divine love" that came along with it. Well, what Ralph and Leo are trying to explain matches the meaning of love via infinity. "There is no you." "We are one." "We are everything / nothingness." "We are infinite awareness / peace. Our ego is fictional." Ok. We get it. So? The question is, what are you going to do now with this wisdom?

Thanks for the questions and response. Well I am 17 so I don't know how young you think I look in the picture to be fair a lot of people think I am like 14 or younger although I did start personal development at 15 but only really got serious into this non dual field when I was 16. Before that I was focused on other areas of life. I got started into a number of insights I learnt through my highschool years that shaped my life forever. I had an exstistencial crisis as a teenager which was strange but a sudden occurance of the impermanence of life led me to a lot of different questions I felt driven to answer. I think my love for cinema as a child actually helped too start this search also since I was always seeing different worlds and perceptions and characters each day which made it apparent to me a lot of things I wouldn't due to the beauty of been able to see different perspectives on the world. If I'm honest I'm not 100% sure what led me to go towards this path I just think I've always had an intuition that there is something more & I've just been curious about discovering why we are here. I think just the way events panned out that were out of my control led me to where I am. I had a first long term relationship during highschool that ended which affected me a lot in those years. I started to read self help and do fitness from there and although I know it was the pretty shallow form of self help it did introduce me to a lot of different information. I was watching actualized.org but when Leo wasn't talking about the stuff he was now. His shift happened about a similar time as mine. As Aroung the age of 15 I became homeless due to family issues such as divorce, abuse etc. That was when an even major shift happened that I decided I really have to take ownership of my one life now and matured a lot through that difficult period. With young kids I recommend you just keep being an example for them and spend time doing fun stuff with them that is related to personal development might help. It's like if you were or are a Dad that loves football if you keep playing it with them and watching it around them most of the time the child will too in my experience since they really do take a lot in from there parents idea of what is a worthwhile interest. Try meditate and do yoga around them and as they get older (if they refuse to do it now) ask them if they want to join in and teach them. Take them to interesting retreats, events and country's to expand there minds. Read children books to them based around the personal development or spiritual or scentific topics you love. The famous book "the little prince" is one of them that can teach them interesting philosophy's to grow up with. Of course there are many many more though you just have to look into it deeply but I believe this is a useful way. You can do the same with all forms of entertainment they love. Just introduce them to a variety of diffekinds even the more socially "weird" ones. Being introduced to many different perspectives on life, relationship, suffering, death, morality, religion, science etc greatly influenced me so I'm only speaking from personal experience. I think the environment your kids live in is important too though so the school, neighbourhood, friends, teachers, media all shape the type of things they will be interested in growing up and some of them can be out of your control if you don't want to be a controlling father. Overall I'm not a father so I'm not the only person you should be asking so maybe someone else on this forum can help you out. I hope this has benefitted you though Also by when I mean pleasurable sensations are ego percieved I don't mean they are wrong or should be denied but mean that they aren't any sort of awakening as it will pass. If you have a genuine enlightenment experience you can feel the mostly divine bliss and peace you can ever feel but it's not dependent on the body's emotions. You become the stillness infinite timeless space that is within everything. I'm talking about emotions like anger, sadness, pleasure such as sexual relief or the feeling when you have a good meal since all those pass and are not a constant. These are not wrong in any way and I'm not saying don't try feel pleasure but what we are looking for is what has always been there throughout our lives at all times. Becoming fully aware of that is enlightenment although the best term would be awakening since it isn't as flashy.

@aryberry I think the subject at hand is knowing one's self. Which leads to knowing one's Self. There's a deep discovery of self honesty that I think you are going through. Like "what do I want, really?" And "How much do I want to work for things or opportunities for purchasing or traveling or whatever?" "How much time do I want to spend working for something vs just living and chilling?". My two cents is keep going deeper but make a conscious change to approach everything with ease and positive emotion. Use meditation as a reset anytime you feel less than awesome. There is no rush. You have forever. You are perfect where you are. It is perfect to question anything. Everything will always work out. You are as worthy watching a rerun of Friends as you are in solving world hunger. YOU are worthy, not your actions. You are expanding the experience of the universe no matter what you are doing. If you sit and stare at the wall, you are adding an exceptional experience to the universe. You are the only you that has ever existed. No one has ever experienced being you staring at a wall before. It is all appreciated. You ARE worthy of everything. Perhaps, you have categorized and assigned emotions to things. Like "work" is not fun for example. Like doing your favorite leisure activity is more enjoyable than running an errand. Maybe you want to consider a different line of work. Maybe you want to find the bliss that lies in doing any type of work. But what is for sure, is that this is your reality. This whole thing is you. When you say it is all ok, then it is all ok. Allowance. Creation. Acceptance. Let go of resistance. Allow.

I don't It slips often, but its ok. We are here to have this "forgetting", this human experience. So let it flow. I can go there whenever I want, that's all. Don't have any techniques. Some people use reminders, like a ring on the finger with some sacred text, or an image of some deity. Some people wear clothes of a special color, with mantras written on them. Some people hang posters/pictures on walls that remind them. So on and so forth. I do not use anything external at all. Why depend on stuff? It promotes ignorance, it becomes a mindless ritual. Some people mechanically do that, the religious people, they do not know what they are doing. The "spiritual" types, meditate. They sit for long hours and focus on nothing but being aware. It works, its the real training. However, if you don't carry that state into everyday activities, it becomes yet another magical ritual. One hour of bliss, and 23 hours of Ego worship. The important thing is, when I see in the mirror, or eat or talk to people, I do not automatically assume that I'm a body with a bunch of thoughts/likes/dislikes etc. I was like that long ago. Now "I am that" !

This morning I overcame resistance and went swimming. After a just a few swim-lanes, I entirely loved it. Then I had a moderate, delicious breakfast. I meditated and successfully completed the negative values release visualization on excellence. During this I remembered getting caught while cheating a test at about 10 yrs old. I articulated the lesson learned as "Preparation is important." I was pumped that it had worked! At that point I had gotten really hungry and prepared a healthy lunch. I listened to my stomach and stopped eating at the right moment - but then all of a sudden I got all jittery about my plan to use the visualization technique again on my negative motivation towards eating healthy and looking a certain way. This was when I suddenly trippled my portion size and stole dessert from my flatmate which I even stretched with even more fat and carbs ... interesting. Then I did the visualization. It turned out to be quite interesting again - and different than I had thought. It had nothing at all to do with my bulimic father actually. I vividly remembered a situation during the celebration of my fourth birthday: I had stolen a friend's chocolate bar just because I wanted to eat the flavor of hers, too. Classic, I guess. This, I did in silence and solitude - I think no one even knew it was me who stole it and that was of no relevance anyway. But it mattered that I knew. I remembered how eating my friend's piece of chocolate gave me zero pleasure. It was harder to catch the lesson here and the one I caught doesn't sound as catchy as the "preparation is important" one. But it's the lesson I caught, so here it is: "Conscious abnegation of immediate gratification is real bliss." This kind of surprised me. Even though I'm more than twenty years older now than I was in the memory, this lesson still seems so much wiser than me. Although I consciously know about immediate gratification vs. true satisfaction now ... I don't think this concept has penetrated my whole being yet. It must have been one of my earliest memories. Next to one of crazy laughter and one of me in the bathroom wondering what/who the hell I am (possibly god? I must be, because I feel and experience! but why can't I experience through other bodies then? I can't be god... WHAT AM I??? Why am I limited to myself?). It almost drove me mad. Kids are so fucking smart. Back today, this afternoon, on my way to a rehearsal I was wondering if it even mattered to me to be skinny after these insights. To lose weight. I thought "no" and that relaxed me. Resistance used the visualization against me. I lost the battle a second time today: My colleague brought crackers. I ate the whole bag. Later I ate a chocolate-covered waffle. Then I got a whole meal from an Indian take out and ate it. I had forgotten how thirsty overeating makes you. Well, at this point I could analyze the hell out of this situation or just ... do it better tomorrow. I'll be updating. The rehearsal was great. I have officially decided: My first full-on passionate project is going to be the duo with this dude. We inspire me. The music we picked inspires me. The unusual combo of our instruments inspires me. Sounds beautiful. I'm going all in. Made the first preparations to make the project real today, taking the next step tomorrow.

@kuwaynej I think exactly this happened to me after doing one of Peter Ralston's exercises in the book of not knowing. I was driving a bus from Prague to my home city laughing at the paradox that I have the arrogance to think of myself that I exist. And I felt such a bliss throughout the whole thing. And then it vanished. Damn that was fun!

There is no need to use drugs. Realizations, Truth, enlightenment and the state of bliss can all be attained the drug free way by working hard on yourself and staying on the spiritual path, being aware and meditating, sharing love with others and loving yourself. Don't let anyone pressure you into stuff that you geniunly do not want to do. There may be a good reason for your feelings.

@Marinus As you must be already knowing, an animal (or human) when faced with danger (any threat to survival) has two choices - fight with whatever is threatening it or run away. It puts heavy demand on the body, it prepares for the danger, all system go on red. Its not a pleasant state for the body obviously. When the danger is over, it returns back to a more relaxed and happy state. Something similar happens to the mind. People in so called "modern societies" are constantly under this mode, because of survival pressures. Race to earn more money, competition, crime, negative people, abusive relatives, wars......the list is long. Their mind and bodies rarely relax. Eventually it becomes a habit, and the negative impressions become permanent in the mind. Mental chatter is mostly negative, it is trying to cope. Bodies are under stress. All you need to do is relax and heal, and it returns to natural state producing the blissful feelings. Initially its a big contrast, so feels ecstatic, but more you meditate, more habitual it gets and bliss becomes just peace.

The Top Ten Things You Want But Don't Know You Want I'm watching Leo's Top Ten Things You Want and I realized that I'm achieving a few of these things on the list but I realize that I could go farther 1. Reality feeling magical This happens to me whenever I'm walking outside on a beautiful sunny day and thoughts aren't disrupting me or disturbing me. It feels like my mind is clear and deeply relaxed and I'm focusing on the sunshine and I'm just enjoying it. It feels like all the mental fog and monkey chatter has lifted. It's like a baby blue sky that's sunny and all the fluffy white clouds are out. Reality also feels magical when i recapture that childhood feeling of being so deeply immersed in a movie or story that time flows by. Reality feels magical when i'm watching an AMAZING theater production and i'm speechless with awe. I also feel it when i feel deeply relaxed while meditating and it recaptures that feeling of sleeping like a baby. I've also been focusing on mindfully savoring tea and coffee and re-connecting with how delicious it is. 2. Things to be completely effortless I'm focusing on making my creativity, happiness, and bliss feel completely effortless where it just flows by and I don't feel blocked or exhausted at all. I'm focusing on achieving that peak experience state and flow state but i want to know how to achieve it where i get so immersed and hyperfocused that time just flows by and it doesn't feel like i'm rushing to beat the clock. 3. Authenticity At the theater and on the mic where I recite my poetry, this is where my authenticity SHINES!!! I'm starting to cut through the bullshit of the inner critic and the fear of humiliation by just getting up on stage and creating what I want when i want. I deeply desire having a devil may care attitude where I have the freedom and the power to do what i want and be intoxicated with life's joys and cut loose and be spontaneous. 4. Dispassionate Mind I realize that my mind tends to fall deeply in love with ideas, stories, and academic fields but what I'm focusing on is relaxing my mind and detaching from thoughts through meditation. My meditation is just sitting in a chair deeply relaxed and just focusing on the moment without the mind going into monkey mind. There's nothing wrong with the mind or ego or thoughts. The mind, ego, and thoughts can be beneficial but also deceptive. I want to focus on training my ego and mind and using it to my advantage rather than an enemy. 5. Full soberness/lucidity I want to wake up in the morning feeling completely motivated and ready for an awesome day rather than waking up feeling exhausted and dreading Monday. I want to wake up feeling like it's Friday, Saturday or Sunday. I want to feel completely awake and with no mental fog or feeling exhausted. 6. The desire to be nobody An alternative to that want is having a fluid sense of identity and self-image where identity is in a state of flux and that you can create and customize identity however you want to. You can program yourself with beliefs and mindsets and emotions and passions and skills and you can focus on experimenting with a wide variety of identities rather than settling on an identity or clinging to an identity. You can even choose to be a blank slate but it's one option out of many. Identity is the canvas and you are the painter who is free to do whatever you want to with the canvas. 7. Samahdi Samadi is a potential state that I can achieve during meditation but I'm just getting started on meditation as a daily habit and as a tool for self-actualization. Altered states of consciousness is a possibility that I'm far away from but in the coming months or a year, I could have a profound experience!!! 8. Truth I'm fascinated by discovering my authentic self and what my true passions are and what's my best life path. I'm focusing on balancing discovery with raw experience with researching rather than solely relying on rationality. For my self-actualization, i'm willing to use a wide variety of resources. 9. Benevolence For benevolence, I'm focusing on becoming a teacher for lower income students and struggling students in Las Vegas. However, my authentic benevolence would probably come from a place of comedy and desire to make people laugh, to fascinate and intrigue people, and to make them think. 10. Simple and natural lifestyle In Las Vegas, when i move, i will focus on living a rich and fulfilling life but by carving out large areas of free time and using the free time to take nature trips to Lake Meade, Red Rock, Grand Canyon or Zion National Park. I want to deeply immerse my life in passions and rich experiences but also focusing on relaxing so I have time to create, meditate, and contemplate. I want to focus on making my life feeling like those childhood vacations and 100% freedom and flexibility over my life. I strongly value freedom and flexibility over life! Here are my deepest desires 1. Being authentic and having a fluid and detached sense of identity and beliefs where my ego is completely flexible and open to new ideas. My vision for my authentic self is the lovable comedian with an aura of charisma that comes deeply from his passion and being uninhibited and free from all the internal and external restraints. I create and act based on intuition and merging my heart and my mind into one! My authentic self is effortlessly creativity! 2. Being free to create my life and my identity and my mind however I want to! My mind is detached from absolutes and shoulds and embraces new experiences and adventures, paradox, uncertainty, expanding consciousness but who also sees the benefit of comfort as a tool rather than rejecting the comfort zone. 3. Having the personal power of a billionaire and an artist who does what he wants whenever he wants and who has abundance and is anti-scarcity mindset. He is free to live life his own way with nobody controlling him. He has the impunity and the confidence to act on any vision like a Tim Burton or Quentin Tarnatino. 4. To live a richly fulfilling life where i was able to be truly limitless.

I'm working on the Life Purpose course and have just finished watching the video about Finding my Bliss. This then got me watching videos from Joseph Campbell. In one video on Youtube, called "Becoming an adult", he talked about the different rites of passage and initiations in different cultures around the world (specifically simple cultures and societies). He talked about how these initiations were designed to kill the infantile ego (characterized by submissiveness and dependence on the society). Therefore bringing into consciousness the mature ego (characterized by authority, responsibility, and courage over one's own life). He goes on to express how many people in our culture live to be 30 or 40 still dependent and submissive in the infantile ego. An example he used for an initiation was of a tribe in Papua New Guinea. The initiation started by covering the boys eyes so they couldn't see. Then a man would come in waving a bullroarer around in the air. This would make a sound which would made the boy think it was a deity, while the man would say he was intent on eating the boy. Then the boy would think he was dead. This would then create the effect of breaking through death. Therefore, killing the infantile ego and making way for the mature ego. I'm wondering if you have any personal experiences with rites of passage, any knowledge or wisdom about how one could create these for themselves in a culture without them. Also, do you think we can create them ourselves, or does the knowledge of knowing what is happening make these initiations not work? I believe that our culture is deficient in initiations and that it is having a negative effect on many people's development. Causing men and women to grow older physically, but stay immature mentally. I believe that by creating a video on rites of passage and initiations would help many people, and that it's important for a healthy society. Thank, in advance, for you consideration. Here's the video

@PureExp I'm only just beginning to grasp the reality that becoming fully lucid during THIS dream, and learning (re-learning?) that with full awareness and realization of my true nature, this shared dream is a play that exists to be not only experienced from a place of pure peace, love and bliss of existence, but is also fully shape-able. I never knew I had the power (I, ha ha). Everything gets slowly better and better. The world slowly becomes more alive & 3D & high def. Each interaction with another human, each one becomes an opportunity to love and appreciate and share. I think I'm actually growing a fair bit in the last year, it's pretty crazy for this guy who thought he was something else! @cetus56 Mini marshmallows! How many beautiful women!? Oh ...it's up to me? There's a music video in there somewhere... and something else for the bucket list!

To most of us, ignorance is bliss.