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And most philosophers did not understand the importance of state of being. I mean, they did not understand that thought is reflective of the state of being, and thought, in that sense, is the appearance of state of being. I mean, some philosophers, as I understand, understood this situation, at least to an extent, like Hegel, Plotinus, Plato, and Spinoza, and the Stoics, that they understood the importance of being in the state of peace, love and tranquility. They seem to, sorta kinda, understand that, but I don't see that any of them worked on that extensively. They become so involved in the process of thinking, and model building, that they were not aware of the background of the state of being that they did experience. That was like a given for them, that they became that mode of being in their own modality, but what was the ground on which they became them? Now, I know, I might, in a sense, be overgeneralizing, but what is it in them that made them "them" that they were? I'm seeing that Heidegger was pretty aware of the importance of understanding being for the sake of being, but what is it that is being that is the experience of being? What is the ground of being if being is being in its own very beingness that made him possible for him? And, at that point, you may say "but then that is 'overmystifying' being", and that what I said about them modelling experience, and being another part of that modelling of the experience, can also be applied to what I'm saying here, and that can be, in a sense, an inevitable loop of "being", when it is the experience of consciousness. But isn't philosophy, then, the experience of reaching towards yourself to discover and build yourself with the "tools" that you have, that are concepts, and concepts of concepts, "possibly" ad infinitum, that makes you you, that makes you the experience of transformation that, then, explains itself? That's one of my questions about being, or of being, the process of "gathering information". What even is information if being is being, and if being is, also, the mode of being that it is? What makes a thing a thing, or a mode of being a thing, if it also is the mode of being itself?

@Haloman We WILL BE able to surpass human biology with spirituality and Truth, however it will take a long time. Please read Sri Aurobindo's books. He described what is possible regarding human biology and psyche and their radical transformation.

Hi guys, I would love to read something from people that are somewhat in the field. I won't bother you with my life story BUT [add 3 paragraphs of life story] anyway, I'm soon going to get my qualifications as expedition leader, as I'm young, energetic, kind of a monkey, love nature, excursions, blah blah so I feel the need to PUSH a little bit and roam the world, the total opposite of settling down but of course I dont want to bullshit in the jungle and in the mountains forever, even though it's cool. that can be fine and i will love the lifestyle, but i'll feel the need to work on something more that is undoubtably consciousness. i first thought about organizing expeditions with a psychedelic experience at the end, and even if that remains an option it might be trickier due to legal reasons and close-mindedness (mabye not in the usa, and i would be fine relocating there for a while, but at some point i would like to get back to switzerland). so my thought was to invent something like multiday excursions with mindfulness, forest bathing, stuff like that. i read a book (https://www.amazon.com/book-vision-quest-transformation-wilderness/dp/0130801100) about these guys that run retreats for vision quest, sort of like a rite of passage, a symbolic death to restart anew, etc. you go with a group in the wilderness, set base camp, then the participants go alone for 3 days and 3 nights in the wild, fasting. there is a whole set of rituals and things you can do meanwhile, anyway starving and being bored to death in the womb of mother earth is supposed to be a life changing experience. and i do believe that. i dont know what im actually seeking here. maybe someone in the field? it does sound very feasible, doesnt it? this could even get huge i would need to partner up with a psychiatrist or a psychologist at least (my ex would do just great ), since i will have wilderness and expedition experience but no recognized authority in the field of therapy. im also fine attending any course that brings me closer to this. you heard about anything? kind of a facilitator but cooler, and maybe even without drugs. just throwing it out here, any comments, feedback is appreciated!!!

I am already having a journal here but I want to make this one separate because it does not fit in with the stuff I write about in my normal journal. And my intuition was telling me this. After applying the pre-mortem technique I discovered that I am having problems with habits. I want to change too much at once and end up changing nothing. So the first thing that I want to tackle is my eating habit. This journal for will for the first months be a food diary. Everyday I will be posting what I am eating each day. Honestly. I don't expect anyone to read this. It will be a boring list of what I ate that day and what I want to improve. It is just to reflect each day my eating pattern.

Your first duty in life is toward your inner development and nothing else, absolutely nothing else. Don’t be tricked into thinking there is anything else but the first rule is your self-transformation.

@Someone here Why so many questions? Are you thirsty for a quest of knowledge, or to quench one's need for leggings, horny conquest? Hard to comprehend, that every bend and ends you go, every moral, is relative to every mortal? Morbid, I know, to consider, that morals are relative than absolute. The morals of a creature alien stage beige, to tribes like the Viking stage purple/red, Native Americans stage purple to red, businesses like hip hop industry and oil to tabaco industries staged orange and some blue, hippie communes, SJWs, leftie leaners, a pinch of orange to a dollop of stage green, guaranteed to make you leap to the greener side of the fence. Meanwhile, Star Trek's stage yellow space systems quite complex, until we discover an alien intelligent hive mind hybrid artificial intelligence, stage turquoise and beyond maybe. I know, so many colors, it's insane this rainbow array of morals like the coral reefs of old, so much so, that these moray eels rather prefer their muralled enclaves as the best for the whole coral reef system, to the death, good grief, ignoring the glaring hole of their whole mental prism they call home. Rather champion their standards, blind bastards, with their double standards and banters making even lib-tards pleasant like strawberry tarts! Technically, historically absolutist morality originally started in every birth and growth of empires/civilizations, to bind their peoples together some more, to bid farewell to older systems that don't work anymore to forward survival agendas way better than before, while keeping the pleasing aspects of those past systems be. So, what would it take, to make these moral nihilists wake up from their denial? Drag a fishing net, by a mile, for a while? Or maybe do a bit of sea mining? How would we develop from my/our morals to higher more inclusive morals? How many mourns of other morals do we need to suffer more? Until we survive the transformation of the globe, as our one true home? Or are we really alone? I don't know, so, we gotta shoulder on forward, warding off evil as we go.

I guess it's a stereotypical day for someone like me Without a nine-to-five job or an uni degree To be caught up in the trappings of the industry Show me the locked doors, I find another use for the key And you'll see I'm well aware of certain things that can destroy a man like me But with that said give me one more, higher Another one to take the sting away I am happy on my own, so here I'll stay Save your lovin' arms for a rainy day Matt jumped down the steps from his front door in one giant leap before turning into his wolf form and raced off to Maya and Wyatt's. He had a few different emotions churning around. On the one hand he was very happy to have had our morning together. I had taken the right initiative to maintain eye contact with him and to let him know that I loved him, and this made him feel special and energetically reinvigorated. On the other hand, he understood that I was in pain emotionally and didn't know what he could do to fix this for me beyond giving me the extra space that I asked for. He could see that my life was becoming a bit more resolved now that I had my memories back, but he wanted to see me happy and thriving and not stuck in the past. He was filled with a renewed sense of purpose at the prospect of returning to work, and stopped for a moment to let out a loud, passionate, "Awooooo!" of joy before continuing on his way to his friend's house, taking long graceful strides as he made his way through the neighborhood streets. When he got to Maya and Wyatt's he turned back into a man, quickly hopped up their steps and knocked on the door three times, with a wide eyed, eager expression plastered on his face. Wyatt answered moments later. "Matt! Hey buddy. It's a bit early in the week for hunting, what's up?" "Hey, can I come in? I wanted to have a chat with you, and, uh, maybe Maya if she's home..." Wyatt moved away from the door and indicated with his hand that it was okay to come in. Matt stepped inside and walked into their livingroom, which was filled with Maya's artwork depicting hunting scenes in golden calligraphy styled strokes and taxidermy busts of various light animals that Wyatt had commissioned. Their livingroom had the common dark red and mustard colour scheme that demons used and their couch and two brown chairs were covered in woven blankets and scattered with little decorative pillows. The floor was a dark wood and had a large hide from a light buffalo that rested in the middle of the room. There were pictures and canvases everywhere that held Maya's completed and incomplete works of art on them. The lighting of the room was very warm and the overall feel of the house gave off a comfortable, lived-in impression. "What do you want to talk about, man?" Wyatt asked. He noticed that his friend seemed to be in good spirits today. "You thirsty? Want anything to drink?" "No, I uh, I'm good." Matt made his way over to the couch and sat down in between a bunch of blankets and pillows, tossing some of them aside. "I wanted to let you know that I'm gunna take you up on your offer. I'd like to come back to work." Hearing this left Wyatt beaming. "Really? That's fantastic news, Matt." When Matt left the house, I decided to take the time to go over my life once more and to try to get used to my new body. I took the large framed mirror that he had on his dresser and propped it up on his bed, using one of the feather pillows to keep it steady. I took the other pillow and held it close to my chest for comfort and stared at my reflection in the mirror for a long time. Just a week ago I was a human being, a middle aged woman in an average looking body with an average looking face. Now I look like a teenager again and absolutely nothing like I used to. And yet Matt said this is the real me. The form taken each time in between my life and death cycles. I leaned in to inspect my face. No pores, no blackheads, not even a single wrinkle. My blonde hair was perfect. Shiny, with soft, bouncy curls. No body hair, flawless skin, a gazelle-like body, and a perfectly symmetrical angelic little face... "If I looked like this while I was alive I probably wouldn't have killed myself." I said jokingly. I had always wanted to be a beautiful woman and I missed my youth when I lost it, but now that I was sitting here in this new form, it felt very foreign to me. Like someone else was looking back from the mirror's reflection and it made me feel uneasy. "My name is Annie..." I reminded myself. "And I died. My name is Annie. And I died. My name is Annie. And I'm dead. Hello, new me..." I pressed my forehead to the mirror. "You will have to get used to seeing out of these eyes." I gripped the pillow tightly as a few stray tears escaped. I repeated some of what Matt had told me the night before. "You were born in Arizona. You had a mother, a father, a brother. You were sick. Very sick. If it wasn't from suicide, it would have been something else. You were lost. You had no choice. And now you're here, in a completely different world with people that you don't understand and you have a new boyfriend. And your soul is stuck within his. Forever. And he knows everything about you. Every embarrassing moment, every flaw, every insecurity. And he still loves you... you're loved. Isn't that weird?" Maya, upon hearing Matt's voice, came out of the couple's bedroom to greet him. "Is that Matt?" She was dressed in a white kimono and had braided her hair into spirals pinned on the sides of her head. She wore black lipstick and matching nail polish. "This is unexpected. So how did Annie enjoy our little trip last night?" She came over to sit next to him on the couch, moving some of the pillows to make a space for herself. "You know, I'm not sure. When I brought her home I told her about her past life and The Mother gave her all her memories back this morning. We uh, we had sex again and she popped up in my eye while we were going at it, you know?" Matt ran an anxious hand through his messy hair. "She, uh, she wants some space to work through it..." "Oh no..." Maya placed a hand over her mouth. "Is she okay?" "Yeah, she is doing better, but I'm sure I'll find out more when I get home, you know? I uh, I came here to discuss some things with you both." Matt continued. "He wants to come back to work!" Wyatt interrupted. "I can get you set up in a few days, man. You can start in the back and we'll move you up to management in a few months. If everything works out and you feel ready for it, then I'll hand everything back to you in six months tops. We'll get a contract ready. By the way, Sophia's the manager now, but I can relocate her to the Mington location. She isn't doing well with Broadview, I think there's too much traffic." "Fuck. Sophia's still working there?" Matt sniffed. Sophia was one of Matt's very first sexual encounters. She was a very beautiful demon woman with a tantalizingly perfect hourglass figure, but she had a terrible personality to go with it. She really liked the idea of cording with Matt, especially because of his wealth and social status within the city. When they tried to have sex he couldn't keep an erection and, feeling completely embarrassed about the whole ordeal, he decided to end the night early. She took it personally and told everyone who worked in the restaurant that he wasn't well endowed and that he would never make another woman happy, and often publicly degraded him to cope with her own irritation that nothing ever panned out between the two of them. Before Matt quit his job, he had admitted to a few colleagues that he had brought a human home and that he was caring for her. Violet. He mentioned that he was developing feelings for her. Upon hearing this, in a fit of jealous rage, Sophia spread rumours throughout the three restaurants that he had a fetish for "gutter rats". Matt was actually a very attractive prospect to a lot of demon women but not finding them sexually appealing, he rarely took notice and had a string of broken hearts that, for the most part, he was completely oblivious to. He knew that when he went back to work, she would give him hell for being in the position to eventually take over her job. "Fuck that bitch." He muttered under his breath. Wyatt chuckled. "I know Matt." Wyatt knew about Sophia's temperament. "It's going to be okay, man. It's just a few months with her." Matt looked at the ground and sucked on his upper fang in irritation. "Matt, I am so happy for you." Maya piped up. "What made you change your mind?" "Well... I have someone now. And I love her. So... I feel fucking good, you know, Maya?" The two of them smiled at one another. Despite being Wyatt's wife, Maya absolutely adored Matt and wanted to see him happy. Before she met Wyatt, she was very interested in Matt and they had gone on a date together but he didn't feel a connection so he introduced her to Wyatt, thinking that they would be a better match. And he was right. Weeks later, they had a cord between them. She was always trying to find ways to bring him out of his shell and to help him facilitate a connection with someone. After he had found a partner for her, she had wanted to return the favour. Hearing this news was music to her ears. "She's waiting at the house for me. So I don't wanna stay here too long. But I have a favour to ask of you." "What's that?" "My house isn't safe to leave a human alone in. Could I, uh, could I bring her by in the morning before I head to work to stay with you, Maya? I can't just leave her in my room all day. It won't be forever. It's just until I can figure something else out." "Matt, of course!" Maya exclaimed. "I can teach her about demon culture while you're away. We'll have a great time." "I don't like the idea of a human staying in my home..." Wyatt intervened. "But if it will get you back into the kitchen, then this is fine. Temporarily." He added. "Be sure to bathe before you come." "Thanks Wyatt." Matt reached out to shake his hand. "I appreciate this so much, you know? But I gotta get going now. I just wanted to discuss this with you both and see if we could all get on the same page." Matt stood up. "I'll see you in a few days to go hunting, man, and maybe we can write up that contract afterwards. Go over everything. And then you can set a date on when you want me to start. Sound good?" "Yes. And Matt? I have something I made yesterday. Light deer roasts with mingfruit jelly marinade. I want you to take some of this and share it with your human. We'll see who's the better cook now, man." Wyatt gave a cheeky smile and left to get the roasts. He returned a few minutes later with a bag that contained the wrapped up meat. Matt thanked them both graciously and left the house with the bag of food in his hands. Once outside, he put the bag handles in his mouth, transformed into a wolf and made his way back up the hill. I went over my life in great detail, contemplating and speaking out loud in the mirror to my renewed image. I thought about all of the spiritual awakenings that I had while alive and how they had left subtle clues for me that this would be my fate. I had always felt that there was someone meant for me, just outside of reach and somewhere beyond the constrains of my designated reality. I wanted to speak to The Mother and to thank her for what she had done for me. I addressed her directly, "Hi..." I said sheepishly, looking at my reflection. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I wanted to thank you for Matt. He's a really wonderful person and I am so glad to have him. I also wanted to thank you for giving me back my history..." I held tightly onto the pillow and gently rocked from side to side. I was feeling anxious to be communicating with her. "I don't think I could have managed here without my memories." "You have created a beautiful world. Your people are very lovely... I don't know much about their culture or their traditions, but their cities are stunning and their food is delicious. Everyone on Earth equates demons to being these evil monsters. I had no idea that they could be normal, loving and so understanding. Just like human beings can. If it weren't for Matt's eyes, I would forget that he is a demon and not a human! We are so similar in a lot of ways..." I continued. "This connection between us feels right. It feels natural and easy. I'm happy, and so grateful that you picked me out to be with your wonderful son. I just thought I should let you know that." I didn't know what else to say to her and decided to end it on that note. I curled up into Matt's red velvet blanket to take a long nap. I had been oversleeping a lot in this new world. A large part of it was due to the stress of these changes coming at me all at once. There was so much to take in and I didn't know how to process it without getting a lot of extra rest. When Matt got home, he quietly moved the mirror back onto his dresser and then went to the kitchen to cook the light deer for us to have for dinner. He let me sleep in peace for a few more hours until the early evening hit. He came back into the room with a dinner tray and gently woke me up, asking me to sit with him on the rooftop again. I agreed and we both curled up together to enjoy Wyatt's meal while watching the stars twinkle and the souls move through the band in the sky. Matt told me about the discussion he had with his friends and his plans for me. I let him know that I was coming to an active resolution with my history and passively mentioned to him that I thought he was the better cook. Upon hearing this news, he took my face into his hand and rubbed a soft thumb across my cheek. "Good girl..." Say, say, my playmate Won't you lay hands on me Mirror my malady Transfer my tragedy? Got a curse I cannot lift Shines when the sunset shifts When the moon is round and full Gotta bust that box, gotta gut that fish My mind's aflame We could jet in a stolen car But I bet we wouldn't get too far Before the transformation takes And blood lust tanks and Crave gets slaked My mind has changed My body's frame, but, God, I like it My heart's aflame My body's strained, but, God, I like it

Actually glad you mention Germany because they're who I was thinking about. Yes they're opening up coal right now but they're also taking huge steps to transition away: They've moved up their goal of 100% renewables to 2035: https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/germany-aims-get-100-energy-renewable-sources-by-2035-2022-02-28/ They've pledged 200 billion euros to transform their industry by 2026: https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/germany-has-earmarked-220-billion-industrial-transformation-by-2026-2022-03-06/ Also this nice article sums up a decent bit of what they're doing: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/how-the-ukraine-war-is-accelerating-germanys-renewable-energy-transition And this is Germany but this kind of thing is happening in a lot of places. The US has signed the Inflation Reduction Act which invests like 350 billion dollars into all sorts of things including wind, solar, storage, nuclear, and manufacturing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw5zzrOpo2s

Sorry for not responding and answering you shortly after in this thread, I was busy going out and making arrangements with some friends and going out and planning what I was going to do for the next exam term I have in September - that I took up my time the day before and yesterday - and I didn't want to write and answer you in the late evening and night hours here because I was unsure of what the exact difference in the timezone hourly gap is and the fact that I didn't want to bother you checking up message threads in the night hours, and also the fact that I felt a little bit too much exhausted and tired after those days to think and write long and in-depth Hope you can relate and understand! Interesting. I had a discussion with a friend the other day who is a bit of a know about, about this topic, about the context of relatively recent historical events in Iraqi politics, and he told me if I understood correctly that this al-Sadr guy had acquired a religious status of an ayatollah himself in the context of the Shiite faith if that is true from religiological and factographic perspective and not a false assumption and claim, and implicit backing of Iran up until a point. He also told me that because of the relative power vacuum leftover by the devastation of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and the role of Iranian Quds Revolutionary Guard Special Forces in militarily defeating it and dismantling it, that as a result of the aftermath of that, Iran has, and the overall type of its Shiite-dominated religious cleric government there, garnered a relatively very popular and favorable status among the Shiite population of Iraq, to the point that Iranian Revolutionary Guard regular and special forces are allowed and almost implicitly understood in an informal agreement, between them and the populace and their religious militia there, to be able to almost pass virtually unchallenged, unrestrictedly and without a bat of an eye through the borders of Shiite religious regions of Iraq going straight through them then into Syria and Lebanon if they so wish, with some minimum border checks and regulations there between Iraq and Iran in those said regions. So it seems like at a cursory glance at what you explained to me and wrote that that al-Sadr guy maybe is in some ways possibly more deeply connected and in touch with the religious power structures currently residing in Iran and maybe using them as a sort of legitimization tool and conduit for garnering approval and support for his Shiite follower base in Iraq, if I am not too mistaken to assume and speculate that, albeit without any solid proof or evidence from my side still backing that claim, on a relatively still flimsy and loose connection and hypothesis. Perhaps he was just testing the waters for his support among the Iraqi Shiite population overall with that call to that armed uprising brief attempt and stunt of his and to maybe see how far willing is Iran also ready to go to possibly back him and support him. Maybe the storming government and officials building's stunt was an attempt at a show of loyalty to Iran? Possibly? Maybe? Perhaps? And also to send a clear message maybe to his rivals among his Shiite support base in Iraq of how much influence and support he really has among them and to whom they are willing enough to truly support, back, and make daring stunts and attempts for, through a show of a general call to an uprising among that part of the population. But if the oil flow export continuity is the sine qua non for the stability generally for the mutual respect for plurality and degrees of tolerance and mutual co-operative co-existence of Iraqi politics, as you say, I don't think, IMO, just shared concerns and economic survival interests alone of continuing to reap the benefits indefinitely, and without a further plan for future economic transformation, transition and also further re-organization and re-structuring, of that type of that raw material and natural resources export-heavy and intensive dependent economy can be the only predictable binding factor there if there are sudden eruptions and disruptions in the world market for that, not indefinite guarantee for stability there to be suddenly pulled like a rug underneath the stability for the whole political scene there if some massive changes and transitions happen in the meantime on the world demand market or some massive world economic organization crisis erupts in the years to come. But hopefully, it doesn't soon and the worst possible imagined outcomes don't come to pass, and some people like yourself still have plenty enough time left in the meantime to keep their options open for elsewhere, for temporary residency or migration in the world for example, until things would stabilize themselves there and truly transform the diverse, and often at conflicting interests odds, society there and solidify for good, to make Iraq a very wanted and sought after destination and a prosperous region like some other states in the Middle East. Hopefully, I wish for that to come to pass as soon as possible rather than later for you as well!

There are many good excerpts. I just picked the first one under each term. Quotes about Enlightenment https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/enlightenment Different Conceptualizations of Enlightenment Actually, there is no universal or agreed upon definition, or even understanding, of the concept of enlightenment. Different traditions use the word differently. Different teachers refer to different realities when they use it. And most people have not the vaguest idea what they are talking about when referring to enlightenment. Sometimes enlightenment means the attainment of a certain stage of Being. Sometimes it refers to a certain insight, perception or understanding. Sometimes it refers to a certain stage of inner development, usually the final stage, which becomes problematic since different traditions take different conditions to be the final stage. Sometimes it signifies the transcendence of ego, other times the death of ego, still other times the transformation of ego... The concept can be useful only in a teaching that defines it very specifically. But we cannot use the concept assuming it means the same thing in all teachings or traditions. Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 182 Quotes about Awakening https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/awakening Appropriating the Capacities of True Nature Thinking that realization happens because “I am stepping aside” is the same thing as thinking that realization happens because “I am meditating.” Both positions take awakening and illumination to be a result of something we are doing. This becomes problematic because it prevents reality from revealing the fact that true nature is always the illuminator. It is the light that illuminates. It is the awareness that discerns. It is the knowledge that knows. The self or the individual or the practitioner doesn’t have these powers, doesn’t have these capacities. And when we use the ordinary style of language—where the subject doing the action is always an “I” or a self—we are appropriating the capacities of true nature. As I said, from the nonhierarchical view, we see that reality does appear this way sometimes, but if we assume that this is the only way that reality is, we limit our experience of reality and miss all kinds of freedom and fun. The Alchemy of Freedom, pg. 92

Most humans are only capable of doing the best they can to defend themselves and reduce harm overall which is their right to do. But most humans are not suited for or capable of the task of delivering "real justice": Real justice is “served” through being made fully aware of what has occurred and the consequences of one’s actions exposed, through the internal realizations and radical transformation in consciousness that may occur from within the doer and everyone around by the “grace of God”, through cutting through falsehood and moving toward Truth, through a rebirth in consciousness. "Real justice" leads everyone closer to God.

@Tyler Robinson yeah sometimes i chug a glass before meditation and it kin of helps. But I'm thinking this is some kind of emotional/spiritual thing as I'm going though quite a big inner transformation.

Imagine if there was some sort of healing centre you could go to for emotional issues where all it consisted of was you getting showered with God’s unconditional love, and the love was so deep and so profound that it healed you completely, and that was all you ever needed. I want to aim to create the next best thing with my work. I want any healing processes and techniques I create to be deeply rooted in existential love, and to ultimately just be a way of showering yourself with love in the places you need it. Love is really the only thing you need for any kind of healing, it's just a matter of giving it to yourself in the places you need it so that it touches you deep enough to actually create real transformation. A lot of healing techniques are already based on being loving and compassionate towards yourself but the love doesn't touch you as deeply as it needs to. That's what I'm going to figure out how to do.

The ego is merely the personification of our sense of self and it bases it's identity on the past experience of the being it exists within. As we accumulate more experience it gradually changes, it's impermanent in it's identity even as it strives for stable coherence in it's sense of self. This is how through the present moment, through our current experience, we can participate in the transformation of our ego's sense of self because we can orchestrate our experience. We can nudge the ego into identifying with what we place our attention on so cultivate it's growth. If we are in presence of peace, fulfillment and yes love, the ego will eventually identify with that presence we have in awareness. It will reflect this as it's self identity and in this harmony of well being the cessation of self suffering will be realized in our experience of 'mind'. Creating a dynamic of enmity with ego only perpetuates the conflict within us and further feeds the disharmony of ill being which fuels the self suffering. So if one seeks liberation from self suffering choose in every moment to be at peace with the ego even if we seek to liberate it too from suffering.

What's are the best practices when you are having an existencial crisis? Should we call it existencial crisis? Should we considere critical moments as existencial crisis or rebirth? Transformation. Appreciate your wisdom. Thank you.

I see the legalization/mainstream use of psychedelics as being a pre-requisite for spirituality to become mainstream. As it stands right now, the amount of work required for meditation to become spiritual to those locked in mainstream paradigms is too large, requires too much questioning. Psychedelics will begin forcing the larger population to question everything though. In fact, if spirituality does not become mainstream in some capacity, I personally do not think humanity can face the many mounting existential threats. And I view psychedelics as a sort of white night capable of helping facilitate a radical, perhaps exponential internal and collective transformation needed to face these threats. So many moving pieces!

Values Assessment Pass #7 OK so this is exactly what I proactively did in pass #6. Now I'll do it again after Leo's instruction / perspective / motivation to be specific and tangible. 1. Integrity 8 Where there is room for growth: I can have better alignment between who I hold myself to be and who I am being. I can also do a better job of keeping my word to myself particularly on things like diet and exercise. Adding to this:the highest possibility for who I am for myself, in addition to the father and husband I'm being, is a transformational leader. That is, leading people to the truth about reality and self, and then guiding people to find their highest purpose in life during and after that transformation. I have come to see that it is out of integrity for me not to be giving my best effort to actualizing that highest possibility of self. And the most attractive way I see of manifesting that now is through facilitating world-class retreats. I could move back to the US and join the faculty of an already existing group doing that, and that is attractive to me, and creating my own program from nothing is more attractive. So having a retreat center where I lead transformational retreats 6-12 times a year would really do this for me, as well as bring Leadership, personal growth, and other values up to a 10. 2. Personal Growth 9 Where there is room for growth: Well right now I am really going about as hard as I can on this one! haha. Adding to this: Where I have been unaligned between my life and what I really want is to be working in fulfillment of life purpose as above, my lack of discipline and consistency with diet and exercise, and my family home isn't really my dream home. I see immediate opportunities for fulfillment in all three places and am in action to succeed. 3. Health & Vitality 8 Where there is room for growth: I have let the habits that support my highest sense of health and vitality get pretty stagnant. I'm addicted to coffee which gives ups and downs in energy levels and I'm not practicing yoga or meditation regularly. Adding to this: I already have zero alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs going on. I already feel very good every day and have a lot of energy most of the time. In pursuit of getting certain body metrics to normal levels, I have been eating two meals a day with no snacking for the last few days. However, I have eaten more meat than I had previously decided to (doctor advised to reduce meat almost to zero for my particular condition). I feel that a diet of 2 meals a day with no snacks, with lots of veggies and whole grains, and keeping meat, wheat, dairy, and caffeine to a minimum will be ideal for my particular body. Also walking 4 times a week, and Yoga 3 times a week. If I were able to keep that diet and exercise routine, I think that would set the stage for a 10 for health and vitality. 4. Responsibility 7 Where there is room for growth: I still view a lot of what is happening through a victim lens rather than the 100% responsible lens. 5. Intimate Relationships 10 Where there is room for growth: Love my wife, love my kids, love my family, have good friends, I'm in close contact with them, this is right where I want it. I count ups and downs, ebbs and flows in these relationships as just part of close relationships, so there is space for fights or disagreements or not being in touch for a while in my "10." 6. Leadership 7 Where there is room for growth: I am a strong leader in many areas of life, especially my family and community. Also my business and the legacy family business. However, I don't have a strong vision for my career that I've been following through with consistently, and that is the main purpose of my taking this course. Clearly, it's being generated now and the expression of leadership in the transformation of humanity will make this a 10. 7. Consciousness 8 Where there is room for growth: A consistent meditation practice would surely do it. Just 15 minutes gets me very deep these days. An hour is difficult to come back from. So perhaps 15 minutes morning and evening with an hour session once a week is the ideal middle ground. 8. Freedom 8 Where there is room for growth: More physical and spiritual freedom is possible as previously stated. 9. Fun & Humor 8 Where there is room for growth: I have a ton of it already, and I could have even more fun and humor in my life. Maybe scheduling one fun activity per month would do it. 10. Intelligence 7 Where there is room for growth: The way I design my vision for the future and implementation of it. As stated above. Adding to this: It seems that I am constantly refining my physical spaces, simplifying, decluttering, making it more logical and usable, etc. Alas - this aspect of "elegance, simplification, intelligence" may never be a 10 for more than a few hours!!!

I’ve been listening to the audiobook Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins. I can’t recommend it enough for those of you in this thread. It’s next-level self improvement content when it comes to mindset transformation.

Imo "life purpose" is simply the path inching you closer and closer to your "full potential". Through that process, you're also discovering who you are. And what you may think it looks like "in the end" right now could be very different from how it ends up being. But the growth have surely happened along the way and that transformation itself was the pursuit all along.

But I would think this applies to you. You don’t look like a beginner on the first photo where you started the thread. And I call bullshit when you say that this transformation from the first pic to the second pic is due to body recomp. Your shoulders, arms, chest all look significantly bigger, that much muscle growth is just inhuman in 3 weeks. You played with the camera angle, pump etc. and that’s it. Agree. The other pics look more believable because of it.

Values Assessment Pass #1: I finished all of the concepts videos and got to the Values exercises. I thought 30 minutes would be way too much time, but at the end I was still writing and in the last few minutes came up wth a few that are clearly some of my top values. These are values that I could see drove my major life decisions and were behind the emotionally impactful moments in my life. What is most meaningful to me in life? In no order, I'd say the top 15 I came up with are: Organization Quality Intelligence Independence / Self-sovereignty Personal Responsibility Adventure Fun Humor Spirituality Connection Friendship Intimate Family Relationships Integrity Health Personal Growth I've gotten a lot of clarity around what I want to create for the future, and started seeing a path of action to get there. Leo's focus on mastery and raising the bar of performance one is capable of and the value that gets delivered also had me see that in the past I was setting the bar too low, with too short of a time frame, and perhaps giving too much power to comfort and ease rather than generating the best results I'm capable of. What I'm going to be doing is giving spiritual / personal growth retreats - the best retreats in the world. People will leave my retreats completely transformed human beings, with a profound new sense of who they are and what is possible for them in life. I had a taste of that with the retreats I was leading in 2019-2020, but that can be taken to a whole new level from here. I'm going to build a beautiful world class retreat center that is the ideal physical space for people to have such a personal transformation, and become a true master at leading the practices and conversations to create the space for those transformations to occur. Anyway, that's what the vision is for now. Let's see where it leads by the end of this course. I can also share that I had hired a (very expensive) personal coach prior to engaging with this course, and he is also supporting this inquiry and creation.

Do transformation mastery and high vibe communication by Julien Blanc And/or do invincible by David Tian and Ace Formula by Adam Lyons This should resolve your social skills and dating issues

@Carl-Richard Yeah, but you have to address it and integrate it at some point. No matter how big the shadow is, you only limit yourself by refusing to acknowledge that part of yourself. I think ending friendships and becoming more isolated can be good when integrating red. You become more dangerous, but then there are less people who you could harm during your transformation. I think for men having a good girl in your life can be good for integrating a red shadow. It's goes well too because woman are incredibly attracted to red qualities, especially because most men and woman have completely repressed their red qualities.

@Raptorsin7 I have been in a situation where my ex lied to me about his bisexuality. I asked him again and again about it. He was hiding it. He thought that if he told me about it, I would reject him. Back then I was a bit, you could say, not so comfortable with the idea of entertaining bisexuality. I probably would have rejected him. So our relationship ended and he later on admitted that he was bisexual which hurt me because I thought he should have let me know early on. That day I reflected on why he wasn't being open about the truth to me. I realized that he thought he was going to be judged or shamed. His idea was not to deceive me. He was only hiding because he was not too open about such things, he didn't know how I would react to it. Hindsight is always 20/20. I don't think that way anymore. Now I'm more open to the idea of bisexuality than before. My transformation to becoming a trans has helped me understand and explore the idea of transgenderism and homosexuality. A few weeks ago when I confided in a male colleague about my trans situation, he was very pissed. Next day he gave me a death threat and said that such people do not belong in society. That has caused me to not open up about my trans struggles to people around me. It becomes difficult to tell the whole truth when you're judged and shamed by those around you. In addition people get to call me a liar if I don't tell the whole truth. It's a tricky thing. What prompted me to comment is the statement you made - "I fucking hate dishonest people." Not gonna lie but that statement hurt me very badly because I have been dishonest too in my life to people around me. But I only did so because I always feared their judgement and hate towards me.. Being truthful was probably a huge struggle for me ever since childhood. But I know deep down that I never had bad intentions. I was just addicted to lying and dishonesty and a lot of it has to do with the way I felt judged all the time. That prompted me to comment, I can see others struggling with truth just the way I do. If we all lived with more compassion and less judgement, maybe people would feel much better being truthful. Just my two cents. I'm also writing a journal on serial killers and Mass shooters and trying to understand why they kill people. At the end of the day, after a thorough contemplation on the nature of good and evil I have come to the following conclusion - All the evil we see in the world is the evil we ourselves create. It goes along the lines of another famous saying - Be the change you wish to see in the world. What I mean is - we blame all the evil on a person, on people who do wrong things. But it's the ultimate absence of love that gives birth to all this evil. People who do wrong things are mere scapegoats that we point our fingers to. Who are the mass shooters? Who are the narcissists? Who are the psychopaths? We might blame them endlessly. But that doesn't solve the problem. We give birth to them. We create them and we blame them. These people were raised by the same society that blames and shames them. We don't want to address their trauma, their concerns, their parenting, their upbringing but we just want to put them in jail and throw away the key, without addressing the issues at their root. I feel this is unjust and unfair. Evil is not an external force with puppet strings in the hands of the devil. Evil is right here within us and we cause it because we don't want to truly love each other. It creates separation. Separation creates a society of you versus them. Then a person no longer cares about you and scams you. We don't see the underlying connections. We only blame the person. There's a saying in the Bible - don't blame the sinner, blame the sin. So yeah, when we create a more compassionate society, we won't have charlatans, sociopaths, psychopaths and mass shooters. There won't exist a need for one person to do wrong to another because where there is empathy there is no greed, there is no bad intent. Just my contemplative thoughts on the subject of good and bad, good versus evil

Eckhart Tolle is the man when it comes to handling negative thoughts. At least that was the case for me. His book 'The Power of Now' coupled with regular meditation practice for a couple of months changed my relationship to thoughts completely to where they're now mostly a positive asset or something that makes me chuckle at the vast weirdness of life. So firstly that could be something worth looking into if negative/intrusive thoughts are becoming tough to deal with. Secondly, weed is an amazing and misunderstood psychedelic. I would never have gone down my current path without it and I'm now very thankful for that, it gave me a lot of insight into myself and helped me explore and connect better with my feelings But this was not always the case for me, my journey with weed has been like an adventurous relationship, it's had its ups and downs. I had quite a few moments where what weed made me discover made me hate weed and regret doing it in the first place. Ignorance is bliss, or so it seems, the stuff weed shows you can bring up negative stuff first. I think ultimately the most valuable insights from weed aren't always so pleasent. But the same could be said for other psychedelics as well. It's just that people are quicker to justify/recontexualize/integrate 'bad trips' on other psychedelics than the negative stuff brought up from weed use. Ultimately I think this experience could end up helping you develop into a more loving being. Both for yourself and others. It could help you improve your relationships with others. I always like hearing of others insights from weed because imo it's so misunderstood but profound. I hope this experience will turn out for you like it usually did for me, where you first get an uncomfortable insight that is but a seed for the beautiful transformation that is to come, if you're open to it it's possible.