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Found 6,279 results

  1. 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" !
  2. 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.
  3. @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!
  4. 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.
  5. @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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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
  8. @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!
  9. Some people report only being transported in heaven and becoming one with God. WITHOUT FEAR! WITHOUT SUFFERING! Without anything but pure bliss. Are they just really experienced with 5-MeO and spirituality that they trust the experience that much? Could you tell us more about this?
  10. I think we need to define what 'happiness' even is as I feel that these is a misconception amongst people in relation to the way Leo (and others) use the term and what we are all working towards. We tend to think of 'happiness' as some form of elevated mood. But that would describe things such as pleasure, excitement, stimulation, bliss or euphoria etc. In fact I think the more appropriate definition of 'happiness' is peace of mind. A stillness of the mind, a neutrality of mood and emotion. That is what we are all ultimately seeking. Enlightenment will probably not bring you eternal bliss, but it will almost certainly bring you peace of mind. I feel this subject of 'happiness' needs better defining as it makes a huge difference to people's expectations and concepts of what we are all trying to achieve through personal development and spirituality. Happiness is the absence of pain, not the presence of joy.
  11. It is interesting, I just watched him. Pretty inspiring to hear that the very experienced meditators rated their constant state of stillness & non-dual joy as an experience that trumps orgasms & 'shroom trips. Holy crap. That's very motivating. Anyone who's enjoyed a few grams of good, dried magic mushrooms and sat in their space-chair having multicoloured horizontal mushroom-cloud orgasms out of the back of their head for a few hours might consider working pretty long & hard to attain a similar state of euphoric bliss permanently. Wow.
  12. For me, intuition comes when my mind is still, and when it appear, it's like crystal clear, with no doubt. It's difficult to know what's authentic in us, because what we think as "authentic" may just be a layer, which resonate with inner motivations, which are unknown to the conscious mind. "Follow your bliss" it's a very personal thing, only you can know, and requires years of research/evolving. I hope to drill into the superficial levels, and find the true reasons for my passions. Leo said once "everything you do in life, is a quest for awareness" maybe it means that we need to experience things first, to step back and growth from that. Ra (in Ra's material) call it "polarization" which I think is interesting). Then, it would be possible to reach awareness without experiencing Samsara at it's peaks, and take the shortcut thought meditation, or experiencing stuff in full awareness, so that the pain dissolve as it is occurring... Back to topic : you have to try it, to know if that's authentic, and you'll figure out on the path (+meditation practice). Personally, I see 2 kinds of intuition, the psychological one (subconscious, neurons...) and the esoteric one (synchronicity, deep meaning, dreams...) I think it's 2 aspects of the same thing, but I don't understand yet the connection between neurons and "infinite" consciousness.
  13. @Leo Gura You may have just described Absolute Truth to a T. There is none. No right, no wrong, no this, no that. The perfection of absolute emptiness makes the search for any truth seem like being lost in a self imposed wilderness. @username You see, this so called search for truth is named that for a very good reason. It gives the ego something to do until enlightenment happens. Can you find bliss in maybe never knowing what is Absolute Truth? That there may be none outside of mind? Not so easy is it.
  14. Bliss is not happiness. Happiness is worthless; it depends on unhappiness. Bliss is transcendence: one moves beyond the duality of being happy and unhappy. One watches both; happiness comes, one watches and does not become identified with it. One does not say, ‘I am happy. Peace, it is wonderful.’ One simply watches, one says, ‘Yes, a white cloud passing. And then comes unhappiness, and one does not become unhappy either. One says, ‘A black cloud passing. I am the witness, the watcher. And that third dimension brings bliss. Bliss is without any opposite to it. It is serene, tranquil, cool. It is ecstasy without any excitement.
  15. I have already left my college. And started online business for earning and moved towards enlightenment with my own choice. Experiencing bliss.
  16. This is completely normal. As you go on with the practice you'll encounter times in which you cannot concentrate more then 5 seconds on your breath. But always remember: If you take an stimulation-addicted being and sit it in an empty room, it'll take years of decades to fully come off the addiction and be in total bliss. It's all just the process.
  17. Scrambling on my LP Habit Streak (3): 5 o'clock dayz Morning routine: (( Meditation (30 min) Programming Subconscious deep-work session (60min) )) Am I still doing my business?: YES?/NO? - I'm really fucking doubting this. Just watched a video from leo, he said if your not 100% you will fail. The thing is I'm not 100% convinced this is my path. I think it is making video's but those are showing no promise. I'm scrambling well atleast I have my morning routine but now I can't fill it in with activity's. Shit I know I should make video's because that is my bliss but it's so hard to fully tell everyone like fuck it I'm putting myself on your screen. If you don't like it well too bad my friend. SDFlkjSDhij hmmmmm. I think I will dedicate tomorrow on deep thinking. Also how can I make video's if I myself don't even have a lot of tangable results in my life. I experienced inner change because I meditated I think but I don't have anything to show off and convince people like HEY LOOK YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO ME! - Consciousness is the key
  18. Learning to swim through life has enough terror for me to turn into bliss
  19. @Dodoster Did you ever consider skydiving ? I hear the fist time you jump is terror that turns to bliss.
  20. @John Flores It would make sense that humanity's purpose is to move into more bliss and less suffering. Everyone is trying to achieve this in one way or another. Me and you just have "superrior" knowledge on this matter. Btw yo dude where do you ger all your info on angels n stuff? Im kinda curios about those since I am from a halfassed spiritual background.
  21. In hopes of inspiring people trying to discover their life purpose, I wanted to share my story. This is the story of someone who went into college for the money. He tried, under pressure, to turn his major into a passion, instead of turning his passions into a career. My situation: I'm finishing up college at a computer science major. I went into the field because I thought there'd be a lot of money in it, and that from going to school, I'd get my ass kicked into high gear and be able to get a good job. I was into PC gaming, like a lot of other CS majors, and chose the career because of that. I didn't think about being a creator, or the huge impact I could have or anything like that. From at least 5 years back, I started really getting into anime and Japanese culture. I started studying the language 2 years ago, and I started to actually see the potential of what I can do with it. I enjoy reading and writing, and I enjoy a well translated manga or visual novel. I think that in a way, translation can be a form of art. A good translation of a translated manga can literally make or break the impact of the work. In this sense, as a translator, you're interpreting the original story and conveying it to an English (or whatever 2nd language) audience. It's a tireless and meticulous career, working on translation, but I also mastering the language will be viable long-term. I worry a bit for betting it all on mastering a language, but I don't believe that prose in Asian languages can be translated into English prose by AI in my lifetime. The written language is so contextual and requires a real brain to determine what's going on in context. Mastery: Whenever Leo talks about the mastery process and coming to enjoy the work itself, it just rung so true with my casual study of Japanese over the past 2 years. I started to actually enjoy looking up individual Japanese words just for the sake of knowing them well, and for the sake of mastery. The reason is fluency, but Japanese is something that I didn't angrily dread pouring hours of frustrating and dread into. I started to enjoy the process itself, and when I have the time, I would slow down to be more thorough studying. Through the law of attraction, I started to get more interested in the culture, in cooking, I started meeting people at college who are into Japanese culture, and I started to look for mentors. All the sort of things that you're supposed to do when you enjoy something and want to master it, I was beginning to do with Japanese before I knew anything about self-actualization. Struggles, details (you can skip to the next section, but it has some specific details on my thoughts about the different career/life purpose prospects: My main difficulty now are some conflicting ideas about how to use the language to become a creator, outside of doing translation. I trust in the mastery process to eventually take care of my needs years down the road, so that I can become so skilled that I can translate, because my literal purpose for living is Japanese, but I've discovered my values and strengths, and I'm reviewing them daily. My life purpose statement I previously made was about programming, because I didn't even consider that I could turn my main hobby, the study of this language, into a career. I thought it was too impractical, and that programming was the logical, safe choice to quickly get that $40-70k job as a coder, as I let my years spent on interests just die completely, in hopes of discovering passion for programming. Some other fundamental issues I have with Japanese - it is largely escapist fantasy. For any Redpill readers here, a lot of this content is pretty much "The Ultimate Blue Pill Fantasy." But I think that by focusing on the creative aspects on the medium, and by translating material that inspires people is ultimately a good thing. Movies and TV shows are also escapist fantasies, but not everyone takes the same thing out of a movie. From Leo, I learned that you can watch a movie with the goal of being inspired from it, like with Jodorowsky's Dune. It's a bit complicated, because I got into Japanese content through escapism, but I feel like studying the language and changing the mediums I consume (more visual novels now than anime) has reduced the dopamine spiking and raised my consciousness a bit. There's plenty of depraved Japanese content that gets associated with anime, and this parallels all the addicting software and social media that's out there with programming. There's pretty much no creative medium I enjoy that doesn't have cons to it. You can even use classical music and fine art as distractions from doing work. Some interesting aspects of Japanese - I find the mediums of manga and visual novels to be especially moving. They're not the same sort of quick, instant gratification experiences that you could get in video games. You'll often a dozen hours on a single story arc before any major climax happens in a visual novel. My highest emotional peaks and peak interests were hit when I was reading visual novels. I think that by spreading this medium to the West, gamers and people who enjoy anime will learn to enjoy the calmer, slower paced aspects of entertainment, and of life itself. Some issues I have with programming and technology: The impact that technology has had on our society, lowering our attention spans, lowering people's consciousness, and all these little quick apps, I feel have actually fucked over my generation in a lot of ways, and now people are dealing with heavy procrastination with all the free dopamine everywhere. Men don't have enough positive male figures in their life, and porn and entertainment is so easily accessible that technology leads to escapism. Of course, technology is a tool and this is a huge negative generalization of it. Mark Zuckerberg might've had a positive creative vision with Facebook and creating his company, and a lot of these companies might actually have great intentions. Being connected with tons of your friends online sounds great in theory, but the anxiety, the fake posts, the instant gratification and dopamine, the distraction element, the attention span and motivation reduction, and all these other side effects are just killers for me. Rather than working with social media or making some game apps, I would want to create some meaningful software, and to spread self-actualization ideals through the software, but I spent years trying to program and never came to really enjoy the process. I'm annoyed that I was so unconscious when building up all this resistance, and didn't understand how I could ever possibly come to WANT to program. I spent every day of my life for years comparing myself to others, thinking about the money, programming under pressure, all before I grasped these self-actualization fundamentals, that made me really believe that I could catch up to and even surpass these friends of mine who are going off to work at Google. Career counselors at my college told me "Not everyone can be like him, but you can still get a good job programming." I think now that if could even make some productivity-related software, it would be really beneficial for people, and it would convey things like discipline through usage and support of my software. I also think that programming will become really chaotic, and in order to gauge the marketplace, I have to really stay plugged in. I would end up being a problem solving sort of career rather than a creative one, at least for some years until I become good enough to gain career capital and creative control. My entry into a programming career could be be too rigid for too long before I can create anything that I feel is meaningful. They say programming is just problem solving, but I don't want to be some reactive problem solver for a company. The solution to this that I came up with was working with Startup companies, and focusing on the creative aspect of programming. I'm definitely capable of becoming an excellent programmer, I believe, but with my conflicting passion with Japanese, and my low consciousness resistance towards programming that I built up from coding under pressure for my classes, it's not right. 10 years down the road, I think programming could be the better option, and I think in the near future I'll start doing it as a side hobby, so I can enjoy it and burn through my resistance. 10 years from now, it could become a new life purpose, or be combined with Japanese once I've become a master and have some economic security. There are other aspects of my life like health, fitness, and relationships that I need to work on, and having two exhausting mental hobbies, Programming and Japanese, isn't going to work out if I want to achieve those goals. My Big Fuckups: (choosing what was possible as a career) I didn't TRULY consider using my years spent on hobbies AS my career. I didn't believe I could do it. I didn't pitch the idea to my parents, even though I knew that I have a good 3-4 years of financial saving saved up. How was I going to tell them that this language I study for fun could actually become a career? Until last summer, I didn't have the confidence to speak up to my mom much at all, until I found TheRedPill and read No More Mr. Nice Guy and started building up my confidence. With learning Japanese, I sometimes guilted myself for spending too much time on it, instead of on college and my career. (NEVER GUILT YOURSELF). I went through Leo's Life Purpose Course and partially preselected Programming as the medium, though I had 3 or 4 other big ideas based on other interests and skills. I had Japanese as an idea on that list, along with writing, but I thought my parents wouldn't allow it and I don't have the financial freedom right now. There are a lot of other psychological investments I've made with Japanese that my ego won't let go of. I have friends of over 10 years that share the same interests as me. Trying to cut my ties with Japanese is equivalent to mental suicide at this point. At the end of my semester in college, I started having so much fun with people of similar interests, and I suddenly felt like "holy shit, I belong with these people." and was doing a lot of meta-analysis of the experience. I felt really overly attached to these people, because I felt like I would have to give up Japanese and sever connections with them next semester to transition into a programming regimen and career. When the semester ended, I felt extremely awful, worse than when my best friend died. I didn't even know that I could ever feel that level of emotional despair. I spent years repressing my hobbies and avoiding people with similar interests, investing into shallow one-sided friendships. At this point, I truly understood the inherent bias of having friends with similar interests - they actually care. Yes, it's a biased, neurotic, cliquey sort of caring that Leo talks about, because they value you because of your shared interests, but this leads to a real tight friendship. It's hard to find people who will be as egalitarian as you try to be, and will appreciate your interests the way you appreciate theirs. Sever attachments from people who don't love and support you, because life is too short to maintain so many shallow friendships. Investment is probably why Leo chose to combine his Sage advice with Actualized.org, rather than leave and become a sage himself, because he's become really invested in helping us, and he'd be abandoning the life purpose he adopted. On the other end of my own ego investment, I have a ton of negative ego investments against programming. I projected all my pain and anxiety towards it, by feeling like it's taking away time from my hobbies, and is creating all of my anxiety and unhappiness. I'd overeat just to be able to program more and get past the pain. I exhibited pretty much every neurotic behavior in the book to many extremes, when it came to programming. I would talk shit behind people's back because they were successful at programming and I wasn't. I thought that since these guys didn't do anything besides programming, they "didn't have a life," because they didn't have other hobbies. In reality, these programmers who enjoy their work and understand the mastery process are actually the happiest people I've ever met. Understanding the mastery process and my own potential to master anything, I feel that my biggest regret was pouring so much negative emotion into something that I actually always wanted to become good at. I felt like I wasn't talented, that it didn't come natural, or that I would lose myself and my hobbies if I dedicated all my time to programming. I realized that these beliefs are something your mind has built, especially with things you've attempted over and over again before learning about self-actualization, and so even with newfound objective information on the hours it takes to master something, and a path to doing it, it will still feel like we sometimes inherently can't do it. tldr; Basically, I see the beauty in Japanese culture, spreading it, focusing on lower dopamine mediums in Japanese, using translation and the written word as a medium, and I've got some intrinsic motivation for mastering the language. Hour for hour, the money will probably come later with Japanese for me, and I might be working slave wages until I'm truly excellent. I'd rather master Japanese and translate, starting at slave wages, than go into programming for the money like everyone wants me to. I'd rather "waste my degree" and follow my bliss, because it lights my fire. I recognize my own bias towards people who share the same interests as me and the connection I feel with those people, and my bias towards anything Japanese. I enjoy plenty of things outside of Japanese, even moreso thanks to self-actualization, and I enjoy talking with people who don't share my interests at all, thanks to mindfulness. I'm utilizing this subjective and biased reality of mine in order to master Japanese. I can't realistically do both programming and Japanese to a high degree, and Leo explained this. The mind subconsciously homes in on ways to optimize learning and retention when you have a singular purpose. It's like a heat-seaking missile, as he says. You start finding the most optimal methods, and because your purpose is so important to you, you see the longterm payoff and invest in those better methods, because of the long-term payoff for the effort in advance. Your time becomes precious. Being married to your life purpose and being disciplined to it gives you the freedom to relent to it. I have to redo part of Leo's Life Purpose Course with Japanese in mind, as I work towards mastery. My recommendations for those seeking their life purpose: Look for what you've done the most in life, something where you feel like you've gone through steps of the mastery process, and have begun to enjoy. Truly forget the money. Get a part-time job or some financial security (refer to Maslow's Hierarchy and what Leo says about supporting yourself first, and then going on to be a creator). Don't go to college until you're ABSOLUTELY sure about what you want to do, and I recommend dedicating hundreds of hours on your own into working on your skill you plan to Master before majoring in that field in college, so that you don't fall into the traps of working for the money. See what other people are doing with your productive hobbies - look at the creators on YouTube. Look at the people who teach your hobby, if it's something like that. Ideally it should be a hobby that's somewhat productive. You can even combine 2 things you enjoy, like watching movies and writing reddit replies --> into doing some sort of meta-analysis of movies as a video career or something. I think that if you've taken one of your hobbies so far that you find yourself saying "I can't live without this," you may find that you have already selected your life purpose. Tap into that, and go all in and see how much energy you can summon into working towards that hobby every day. See how confident you feel when you imagine "I can just utilize this one main hobby of mine, increase the priority to the top, and I can let the other ones go." Also, as a general thing: Watch Leo's Foundational videos on YouTube. They helped give me a clear picture of self-actualization. Also, don't fall into the trap of settling for a shitty life purpose or career simply because of having the goal of Enlightenment and enjoying the Now. The whole point of Actualized.org is to become the best that you can be, not become some enlightened guy at 7-Eleven. The Maslow's Hierarchy video was also really helpful in this regard, since I was actually debating between mediocrity + enlightenment. Also, not to sound like a shill, but the Life Purpose Course helps a lot of things click together. I think I learned to some extent like 50-70% of the theory from Leo's videos. I think a key to taking the course is to do it when you feel you're financially stable, or if you're in high school or college. The confidence you get from having a more complete picture, though, is worth the $250. You have to think of it as an investment in yourself, just like the food you eat, the house you live in, the books and video games and coffee mugs and crap you buy. Don't be afraid to invest in yourself, especially for the long-term. You only get one life. I can finally proudly share this video from Alan Watts, because I feel that I'm living it now - And if you still want to convince me how easy it is to become a programmer, I'll check some resources you send to try and do it on the side, but my life purpose is to master Japanese and become a creator with it.
  22. I use it sometimes, edibles are great, otherwise the experience is always so short. Had my first semi-bliss like experience the other day through self inquiry (or another good label for it, the feel 'I' mantra), where i could feel the field of consciousness all around resonating with parts of my body, it was wonderful and it has deepened my every day consciousness and practice permanently. drugs ftw
  23. When you truly grasp that there is only you here, that we are all simply one consciousness experiencing itself through separation, in that moment you will feel true love, unconditional love/bliss because you've just realized that there is no one else here thus nothing to fear since you are everything within itself. This feeling will ultimately lead to self love and usually for a very long time if you follow the wisdom and stay in the light. I feel like I've been there and back multiple times, this "in a sense" proves you can lose yourself so if you find yourself, go deep and embrace and surrender to it with every part of your being, because the more you lose yourself, the more you will find yourself.
  24. @electroBeam Sup My dude! =D Surrender. Surrender to your experience. It is not random. Nothing that ever happens to you is random. It is the beautiful expression of life, as you are. Life will guide itself through you. You cannot control it. You will not control it. But life cannot lay on you anything you wouldn't handle. Give it up. Life has its own ideas of what it wants to do with you. You will not do anything in this process, unless you wanna stop the process. Life will flower by itself, you only need to allow it. Allow life, allow release, allow experience, allow the present moment. Your inner demons are life, just like bliss. It will get balanced out, as soon as you allow, the magic will happen.