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love love love love love NONDUALITY love love love...

Is light a wave or a particle? Is enlightenment nothing or is it light? If it's nonduality, not two, then how come we have the word two and the word not to name what we're talking about in the first place? There's no resolution, no ending. Thank GOD for that cause otherwise, this, (whatever the fuck this is, cause I don't know) wouldn't be so much fun.

So this one is a bit weird and sort of shows the more generally thought of as feminine side of spirituality. You're a living painting with a spectrum of color (duality) on a Snow White canvas (nonduality). "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" - I'm Wishing/One Song

The only thing I knew about enlightenment back then was that it was a thing. Literally nothing else. I had spent a week doing active mindfulness exercises, and then I decided to meditate for real. On the 3rd meditation, I reached a state where my mind became totally silent and it started to feel like my body was turning hollow and that I was going to disappear forever and never come back. Very blissful, but terrifying, so I stopped it out of fear. I then started googling what was going on, and I didn't think that it had anything to do with enlightenment, but I was wrong. I didn't turn into a saint or anything, but it changed me forever. Weed stopped being fun, I had less cravings for stimulation, less boredom, less fear, social anxiety almost disappeared. What really happened after that is that I became acutely aware of what I later learned is called "dukkha" in Buddhism: the fact that every moment is filled with an innate sense of dissatisfaction, and you're always trying to alleviate the subsequent pain by seeking new objects and events. It intuitively showed me the path out of that endless cycle, and it gave my life a new sense of purpose and meaning. It was only later when I discovered people like Sadhguru, Alan Watts and Rupert Spira that I started to conceptualize the experiences I was having. I entered the experience of nonduality essentially ignorant, only having watched like three of Leo's videos and listening to Sam Harris talk about meditation.

Money is a powerful control structure, but it's a clunky and mechanical control structure. And also, money is the typical ego structure of separate control, which ultimately is an illusion. From a nonduality perspective control is the whole of reality moving as one process. And it's a process caused by both past and future rather than being a mechanical cause and effect from past to future. Otherwise it would be duality. To meditate on being one with God as ACIM recommended is the examination of the whole process of life from a nondual perspective. It's tricky to meditate on all of reality so meditation on money is useful. For example instead of observing clouds as in Ramana Maharshi's practice one can observe thoughts and feelings about money and let them dissolve.

I don't know how to fully go into non-egoic consciousness but I think a lot of it possible though a lot of meditation, self help work, and shadow integration. One thing I will say that feeling like an idiot is a part of the ego because the ego likes to feel smart (its a shadow), but the self, the self is everything therefore it is an idiot and is also smart. It's okay, I've had a similar experience of felt like an idiot because I just accepted the assumptions around me. The best way to integrate feeling like an idiot, is to recognize it without judgement. It seems difficult, but what helps me is to say that it's okay to feel like an idiot, it happens and its natural given the quality of consciousness we are surrounded by. I'm using this as an example because incorporating self love does help in expanding the self while minimizing the ego. In addition to meditation, I would probably add self inquiry and more research into subjects like nonduality and non egoic consciousness. I know you said instead of thinking or studying it but I think that is important because the more background knowledge you know, the more you plant seeds mentally . Therefore if you have an experience or an observation in your everyday life or in meditation, it will register as nonduality and non egoic consciousness and you will be more aware of it because that is what you had your eye out for. Always be looking for connections in the real world on how nonduality plays out. Basically ,the law of attraction is at play here. I don't think you're doing anything wrong if meditation mainly just brings you calmness. That's perfectly fine, you probably need more things to supplement it. I can't say I have all of the answers, but that's at least what I did because I personally don't feel comfortable with psychedelics or a magic pill so that's what I'm trying to stick to. I'm not entirely sure if this helps but I thought I'd put my view out there.

Gautam Sachdeva like Roger Castillo had Ramesh Balsekar as a teacher and is also a nonduality teacher. Roger sometimes talks about A Course in Miracles and I found that Guatam is also talking about ACIM:

Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? Leo Gura Jul 19, 2020 _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ However in the video Leo says: " Everything is Nothing" and " there is no distinction between something and nothing " But the title does not say this. The title says that nothing exist only something exists. So where is the evidence that nothing exists other than "nothing" being an abstract dualistic concept but not a real thing? The title of the video is not " There is no Distinction Between Something and Nothing " Similarly Leo has said there is only Love and that hate doesn't exist and he justifies that because assuming nonduality is true then if we add hate to Love it's two things not one. ____________________________________________ So we return to the original title Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? Prove that that is not true. That "nothing" doesn't exist. It's a mental construct. What about the idea Nothing is all there is , everything is an illusion? It doesn't matter, an illusion is not nothing. What about the statement alone Nothing is all there is ? That doesn't work because we experience different things. We only experience things, thoughts etc You go into a pitch black dark room insulated from sound yet you can sense your feet standing there, or your own breathing , thoughts memory etc. Just being alive you are experiencing and that is not nothing. Ok what about statements like Infinity is Zero Up is Down Hate is Love Everything is Nothing I am you You are Me If you take two words like this that are considers opposites and you put the word "is" or "am" in between. The are interesting because they doesn't make sense. They seem clever , paradoxical and your brain tries to make sense of them but it keeps looping an it can't In the video the idea is raise why does the universe have various things in it ? Wouldn't it be simpler and more elegant to have nothing? Hypothetically yes but that would be extremely boring. So we return to the original title Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? Why wouldn't only something exist? Where is the proof that nothing exists? See, the intuition gets it right the first time. There is only something Then the mind comes in, intellectualizes and imagines that nothing also exists That's the minds illusion, nothingness. It's elegant in it's simplicity. However reality is not elegant in that way. Sometimes we find peace in simplicity. But that is because our minds can be overwhelmed if attempting to be aware of a multitude of things at once. To focus on on one sometimes is a needed relief from the whole universe Meditation is an artificial thing, But it is useful to use to step out of distracting, repetitive chatter We need to get away from "it all" sometimes ______________________________________________________________________ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/emptiness-most-misunderstood-word-in-buddhism_b_2769189 Emptiness: The Most Misunderstood Word in Buddhism “Emptiness” is a central teaching of all Buddhism, but its true meaning is often misunderstood. If we are ever to embrace Buddhism properly into the West, we need to be clear about emptiness, since a wrong understanding of its meaning can be confusing, even harmful. The third century Indian Buddhist master Nagarjuna taught, “Emptiness wrongly grasped is like picking up a poisonous snake by the wrong end.” In other words, we will be bitten! Emptiness is not complete nothingness; it doesn’t mean that nothing exists at all. This would be a nihilistic view contrary to common sense. What it does mean is that things do not exist the way our grasping self supposes they do. In his book on the Heart Sutra the Dalai Lama calls emptiness “the true nature of things and events,” but in the same passage he warns us “to avoid the misapprehension that emptiness is an absolute reality or an independent truth.” In other words, emptiness is not some kind of heaven or separate realm apart from this world and its woes. The Heart Sutra says, “all phenomena in their own-being are empty.” It doesn’t say “all phenomena are empty.” This distinction is vital. “Own-being” means separate independent existence. The passage means that nothing we see or hear (or are) stands alone; everything is a tentative expression of one seamless, ever-changing landscape. So though no individual person or thing has any permanent, fixed identity, everything taken together is what Thich Nhat Hanh calls “interbeing.” This term embraces the positive aspect of emptiness as it is lived and acted by a person of wisdom — with its sense of connection, compassion and love. Think of the Dalai Lama himself and the kind of person he is — generous, humble, smiling and laughing — and we can see that a mere intellectual reading of emptiness fails to get at its practical joyous quality in spiritual life. So emptiness has two aspects, one negative and the other quite positive. Ari Goldfield, a Buddhist teacher at Wisdom Sun and translator of Stars of Wisdom , summarizes these two aspects as follows: The first meaning of emptiness is called “emptiness of essence,” which means that phenomena [that we experience] have no inherent nature by themselves.” The second is called “emptiness in the context of Buddha Nature,” which sees emptiness as endowed with qualities of awakened mind like wisdom, bliss, compassion, clarity, and courage. Ultimate reality is the union of both emptinesses. Some Buddhist students think that a meditative state without thought or activity is the realization of emptiness. While such a state is well described in Buddhist meditation texts, it is treated like all mental states — temporary and not ultimately conducive to liberation. ___________________________________________________________ Reality is impermanent. Things come and go. When they go do they go into "nothingness? " No they disappear. They don't go into a place called "nothingness" Nothingness is the mental construct. That is the idealistic illusion things don't have "no" or "non" in front of them. Those are abstractions There is. There is no such thing as nonduality. Absence of duality is not a thing And because it's not at thing that doesn't mean duality is real. that is another construct There only are things And if you says there are only illusions of things illusions are not nothing They are something Welcome to somethingness

I think desire is fine. It's when desire is fueled by suffering it's a problem. And interestingly, A Course in Miracles says that desire is fine too, such as: Desire needs to be aligned with the Holy Spirit, meaning recognizing and actualizing nonduality. The term "holy place" can be seen a wholeness, nonduality (holy means whole).

This term "nondual" it was mainly associated with Zen Buddhism although the Vedanta school of Hindus, also centuries old now describe their philosophy as nondual as well. And Zen monks never describe nonduality as experiencing God

Love, obviously. You are me, I am you, we are in this together. Notice you didn’t answer the question. You’re employing deflection. I would answer, so that you got deeper’ into it, or at least contemplate why you didn’t answer. In simple relative logic, you made a thread, you claim you’re open minded, then you ignore via deflection. It’s highly worth noticing and understanding - in my opinion. That I am making you understanding something is a misnomer. Understanding is letting go of thought attachment, of relativity believed to be absolute, and as such always up to what is absolute To do, though the doing is apparent. Without that suffering, love is readily ever present. Letting go is initially highly counterintuitive to thinking, striving in the vein that there even is something to figure out & perpetuating the experience of the ‘figuring out’. Which is why I asked what’s on your mind, so to speak. By all means though, carry on, and Godspeed. You seem to have a chip on your shoulder, a bit personally held in my regard / yet at the same time you do seem to be sincere in your seeking understanding. Forewarning...you’re challenging attitude is enjoyable. Here’s some new perspectives you’re open to that might be useful. If you’re not as open as you believe, no worries, just disregard...might come back around down the road, might not at all. "Everything is Love" is subjective bias “Everything” is a thought. No one ever experiences an everything. There isn’t even one thing, let alone an all things, or an every thing. If you inspect & scrutinize, it is discovered there is only a complete perfect no-thing wholeness, no parts, or things. Nonduality is not a state. That’s a belief about nonduality. You can’t experience God, that’s a misunderstanding of “both”, duality. You can’t experience that everything is love, love is self realization, not “everything” realization. Again, there is no “everything”. You as depressed is a label upon what can not be labelled, and that is precisely why it feels as it does - because you are love & pure goodness. Love is well beyond, prior to, and appearing as, meaning. Love can not be a perspective, all perspectives are initially an appearance of love, and ultimately there is no appearance. Only you can transcend suffering. Start be recognizing what is and is not, direct experience. In this example, you’d have to humble down to the recognition the direct experience is only your thought about these. Also notice that to cover that up, blame and accusation is utilized. You don’t have to choose to do that, you can choose to inspect instead. Always up to you. If there seems to be a struggle to do that, letting go emotionally is the key. Emotional suppression keeps the mind contracted, attempting to resolve feeling with thinking. We all try our best, but that never pans out. All roads lead to letting go. How rough your road must be is always up to you. Nonduality means, as in points to, that there are not two. Your mind seems paradox locked. I’d write the opposite of your beliefs down, and contemplate them until you genuinely realize they are equally true. That is all an appearance of love. Suffering, with a little inspection, is not something you could be in or out of, it is experience you do or don’t create now, by believing or not believing thoughts (aka thought attachment, or identification as a separate self in many different ways which all are thoughts being believed.) There are not other people, that’s a belief, and you most definitely can literally see through their eyes. You probably wouldn’t presently believe this and I wouldn’t expect you to, but that can actually become completely normal to you & if you are genuinely interested in helping anyone transcend suffering, it is extremely useful and insightful. There’s a lot of letting go prior to such apparent experiencing. But that’s a relative statement, it’s all appearance / experience, love. Everything is love and there are degrees and modes of love. Nothing is love and there are no degrees or modes of love. You can also put the games down and awaken, and begin playing the game. No ya don’t. It’s up to you to transcend that. You can expect people to comply with your conditions, but you’ll suffer for it and inevitably let it go. Love is formless, boundless, unlimited and infinite. Love is conceptual to you because you’ve conceptualized a you and in turn, conceptualized love. Pretty much unavoidable, and absolutely innocent. You are the love conceptualizing, just haven’t self realized yet. Scrutinizing and holding positions as you are is most beneficial, as it inevitably leads to doing the actual “work”, practices, inspection of direct experience, etc. The stuff you are reading about other people doing. All roads lead to letting go, and letting go reveals absolute love. There would seem to be objectivity, and for that matter subjectivity, unless you have transcended perspectives and realized you are what you are referring to as objectivity. Then, there is neither. Reality is love. Reality is nothing. What do you practices look like? Meditation every day? For how long have you? Weeks, months, years? This would be a key questioning with noticing if you ignore it. It would put to some resistance to letting go of thinking. It would reveal and release what is ‘grinding your gears’ in regard to love.

Reality (God) is unlimited. If it weren’t, something outside of reality would have to limit it... meaning the limiter would be unreal by definition. The consequences of this are rather amazing: absolutely anything is possible, including God’s self creation. And the really cool thing is... since time is among those aspects that are created, rather than creation being some event that happened long ago, you’re witnessing it right now... from the so-called vantage point of pure infinite potential, only inferred to exist because in a sense you can never experience it... it IS you. You are where you have always been: here and now. You are nothing and everything, but the only way you as God can actually be truly infinite, is to limit yourself infinitely... and ONE of those limitations is the perception of you right here and now being a seemingly finite being that feels it is not omniscient. It is as it is. How? Psychedelics... but also Self-inquiry: where is this I-know-it-ness coming from? Anything seen is not you since you are the one seeing (at least you assume ), but that appears too and is just a thought. When the I is absorbed in itself it eventually purifies and stops, revealing nonduality. Seeing and seen arise from each other, together, however, it is also true that they do not arise, as they are empty. Since emptiness too is empty, there is this.

I am enjoying it. I am aware of you helping me. Are you aware of me helping you? Look into 'Light Density' to gain understanding of how things become. Nonduality = Love Do you know what a thought actually is? A thoughtform is made of the same substance as anything else; Pure Love-light. And it is made through the process of polarization. It has nothing to do with humans or bodies or beliefs. Rather; frequency. Separation is literally impossible. It never happened nor will it ever happen. Being lost in thought does not imply separation. Only sleep. Become Love, you mean? ? Cool story. Your mind is kinda awake... But your heart is definitely shut down. This...is a thought. And it's happening. This is also pure consciousness. Pure Love. Pure Light. It's only 'nothing' to the mind. The Heart bothers not with such things. The Heart is way too occupied with loving. The Heart has no polar opposite. The Heart is whole. The Heart only beats. The Heart only is. The Mind...is just a fun little game. (which I absolutely love playing)

Hey, loves. I have a peculiar appeal today. Questions are highlighted at the bottom. I'm a writer, though only recently my little sheep started bleating in English. But enough of the background, the rest is in my journal. Now for the rare butterfly itself. I'm interested in combining reading and psychedelics. But for what cause? As a conscious artist or a creator, one could refer to themselves as to a refracting glass prism. (Thinking of Pink Floyd's logo.) The prism's purpose is to refract the Universal love and wisdom it is receiving; onto others. You are the prism. Please, excuse my analogy and take it with a grain of salt. It's the best I came up with. As such, the glass prism, indeed you, face various problems. One of them is the MASSIVE "information loss" that happens between you and the receiver. Almost all of the original meaning, wisdom and emotions are lost in the transition. You ache to express the boundless, yet through bounded ways such as writing or painting or speaking. And what little amount DOES reach the reader, is skewed and distorted by their world-view and perception. If you do realize the infinite beauty of art in those forms, good. You know the Truth. But you are a statistical outlier, and to the majority it will remain as described in the paragraph above. Now, I'll stick to writing. Of great help to opening up can be psychedelics and other methods (mainly shamanic breathing for me) -- helpful to the point where the writing pulls you in and becomes as real as your hand. Of course the hand itself goes and meets it half along the way, but I don't want to bring any truth-talks here today and spit nonduality. The point is, with the right mindset, any writing, picture, video game, can become epic adventures you're on. I'm talking about living through the art as the reader. As the author, it makes sense I have literally lived through the adventures of my characters. But wouldn't it be amazing if you could bring the reader along with you onto the same vibration? Perhaps I'm the only one. Perhaps only I see the scope of possibilites if less "information" got lost in the transition between the creator and the receiver. People dream about virtual reality technology, when in fact the greatest potential has been in front of them the whole time. I haven't experienced with microdosing psychedelics while reading, and so I would like to ask you. 1) Have you ever read a novel on psychedelics? 2) If so, did the story become more immersive and fascinating? 3) Did you feel a deeper connection to what the author was trying to say; sort of telepathically? ...or, instead, address any previous point from the post if you have a relevant experience. My point for this is to create something fun and adventurous while also being worthwhile to quote in development journals. It could be a whole new branch of art and business. Adventure is one of my top values, and while I'm not doing a hardcore spiritual practice, I always held a special place in my heart for things like Uncharted game series or books by Jules Verne. I wouldn't mind explicitly calling my fiction books 'to be read under psychedelics.'

Blinding Joy I took a moment to reflect on the last couple posts. I am noticing how this journal where I record thing that bring me joy is still an egoic response. While joy is a higher quality emotion, one that is more preferable to experience since it is closer to our natural state of oneness, high quality emotions are still a compass pointing us towards survival. That said, that doesn't meant that we throw away the compass, rather it is still important to critique and reflect on what is bringing us joy as it too can have blind spots. I'm thinking of doing this critique and analysis of the things that brings me joy every now and then on this journal. One thing that brings me joy is the idea of growth especially up the spiral towards stage yellow (systems thinking). The desire to grow is rooted in survival. There are some people who stagnate and that's because growth is not a part of their survival. I think wanting to grow can be used consciously to get us to higher qualities or more sustainable stages of survival, but it is still important to recognize this as a part of survival. If that's the case for a person who sees growth as survival and identifies with it, it isn't surprising that a lack of growth or an ego backlash can hurt the ego and that person's self concept. Instead of fighting it, its important to embrace is and paradoxically it will result in more sustainability and more survival because you aren't constantly beating yourself up for things. Also, I did mention this on that particular post but it bears repeating Joy can point us towards an authentic sense of survival. Considering this, sometimes we interpret something that scratches any psychological itches or traumas as a sense of joy. Nothing wrong with that, it's just more data to go off of. Whether or not it is problematic can be determined by how healthy or sustainable the manifestation of this form of joy is (again also recall that the words problematic, sustainability, and growth still deal with survival but I digress). Drinking away your sorrows is a lower form of expressing trauma through an addictive, hedonistic, form of joy while acting from the joy of teaching is a higher form of joy even though both indulge in the thought of the same event. I suppose because of the potential limitations of joy, I can see how something like peace can be seen as a more higher consciousness state as it relates more with being. I wondered why peace was typically placed after joy because I always felt the most expanded when I felt joyful. But now I'm starting to get it more. (also the two emotions in the yellow section are anger and desire since it is hard to read) Nevertheless, I'm not going to stop pursuing joy. I think it is still important for me to embody it more and have it become my natural setting as I continue to move up. I do experience everything on this pyramid, but I would say that my default setting, the emotions I feel the most often has moved up as I began working on myself. Right as of now I would say most of my emotions fall between neutrality and joy. I remember at one time a few years ago when I was very depressed my default was between courage and shame. I'm still working through the lower emotions and I doubt they will ever completely go away. I see them as more of a "warning emotion" rather than a "negative emotion." I feel that calling them "negative emotions" causes more resistance to accepting those feelings and makes the ego more likely to tense up while calling them "warning emotions" gives one a sense of agency to fix whatever is going wrong, identify what the emotion is trying to tell you, and helps you distance yourself as the feeler from the feeling itself without negating it (acceptance is a more higher emotion) . I don't think the "warning emotions" will ever completely go away since they are there to inform but the goal is to build a more sustainable life where you aren't always on edge for something going wrong I suppose so that you can have more time for being. And also to completely negate the lower tier and separate oneself from it is also a form of duality which deters away from being (but then again duality is still a part of nonduality and nonduality is everything) Ok..... I'm going to stop there and embody what I do know since I think if I keep talking, I'm going to confuse myself and that is going to cause an ego backlash lmao. Goals for now: Joy can be informative for where you need to heal and what your survival mechanisms are. It comes in many forms in both higher and lower consciousness so it's important to be critical and draw distinctions. Peace doesn't have as many limitations as joy and therefore is higher than joy. It is also closer to being. Still, keep your eyes out for it. Keep an eye out for survival, even higher consciousness forms of it. I still need to embody joy more as it is the higher bracket of the section of emotions that I feel the most option (which is between joy and neutrality).

ACIM says that all minds are connected. Is that true? Of course it is! That's trivially true from a nonduality perspective since everything is connected. And this also means that in a collective consciousness, when one person learns something, the whole collective learns it! So now we can see how incredibly limited ego consciousness is where each person needs to learn the same knowledge.

The metaphor of the ego as an ice cube in an ocean is useful to describe duality. Nonduality is only the ocean.

Well... He seems to have gotten the requisite taste of nonduality. And definitely purports to have had realization into no self and no free will. Yeah... he’s still confused though lol

With both duality and nonduality there is still existence. Things might not exist (though they also do exist), but existence is existence, and it’s nondual.

Is mind causing physical reality or is physical reality causing the mind? My answer is: neither! Because both of those are duality perspectives. From a nonduality perspective the cause is all of reality as a whole. And the nonduality perspective is the true perspective, or reality wouldn't be one. Even with parallell realities if there is no connection between our reality and a parallel reality, then those are separate realities, each with its own nonduality. In my model parallel realities are in theory possible, yet they are all included within one larger whole reality (Indra's net). The nonduality perspective is a huge change compared to the ordinary materialistic perspective, and even compared to many spiritual perspectives! Because those are often duality perspectives. Even the claim that consciousness is more fundamental than physical matter is a duality perspective.

Is physical reality an illusion? No! That would be a duality perspective. It's the belief in total separation that is the illusion. For example if I have money in a bank account, that money actually exists as stored information in computer systems operated by the bank. The same with my physical body which is real and actually made of atoms. The key is to recognize that all things are connected into a wholeness. So for example the money in my bank account and my physical body are one. And physical reality and my mind are one. That's nonduality. Ego tensions are caused by the belief in total separations. From a Jnana Yoga perspective spiritual realization is the removal of the false belief in separations, not merely as an intellectual belief but actualized so that the ego tensions dissolve.

If everything is information as I assume, then what is the body of flesh? The Bible says that the body of flesh cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Yet, from a nondual perspective the physical body and the mind are one. A Course in Miracles says that the physical body is the belief in sin made flesh: And is this passage ACIM says that the body is another order of reality than thought as merely an appearance, so that's a nondual perspective: The body of flesh then means the belief that the body is a separate object, which explains why ACIM says it's a belief in sin which means missing the mark, meaning a misperception of reality. So I take it that the body is already pure information, even from the ACIM perspective. And this is something I think many spiritual teachers miss, even nonduality teachers, by making a distinction between the physical body and spirituality. What is needed is to look into the transformation of the physical body such as described in the Law of One as going from third to fourth density. Because not only the ego needs to be integrated, also the physical body needs to be integrated, or it's an incomplete integral approach.

My initial impression of examining anger is that it's a form of attack. And the attack in turn is a form of protection. And the perceived need for protection is caused by fear. And fear is a result of escaping confusion. ACIM says: If we are in ego consciousness, is it then really true that we don't wish anyone well? From a wholeness perspective it's true since the ego cannot make the whole well, nor does it have any idea of how to achieve that. And without wishing the wholeness well, the ego wishes from a nonduality perspective no one well, not even itself.

I found a thread that really resonated with me. I went a little over board with my comment but I did enjoy writing immensely nonetheless. A large part of education I believe has to do with the beliefs you were brought up with in regards to the world, other people and perspectives, and yourself. It isn't something that is limited to reading, writing, and memorizing a bunch of facts. I would say that a large reason as to why this probably resonated is because I was raised in a problematic way and I had to take years to heal from negative parenting and learn skills I should have been taught. I took up that work as soon as I left my house at the age of 18. It was difficult and grueling work but it was very worth it. If i ever decide to have kids, I don't want them to deal with a fraction of the trauma and difficulty I had to sort out. I want to take responsibility and break as many cycles of toxicity as I can. It may not be perfect but it is a progression. And that means raising them in a conscious way. While I do enjoy self-development and do for conscious reasons, I'd say that passion originated from necessity early on which I will probably address in another post. But for now, I'm going to link the thread and copy and paste my reply on how to consciously raise kids right here: Ok I have wondered the same thing tbh. Here is what I think. I know this is long but I really contemplated about this in the past because if I choose to have kids, I want them to have an easier time developing than I did with my parents. You don't have to necessarily movie to a Scandinavian country to raise your kid in a stage green/yellow way. I think what you do inside your house is incredibly important. If anything, I think it's a good idea for kids to witness how different people from the spiral act to sharpen their critical thinking skills. From personal experience, my home life was pretty orange/blue, my neighborhood was green, and I went on many trips to India to visit family, many of whom who are very solidly blue. So i was surrounded by numerous perspectives. My dad, whom I will credit to helping me move up the spiral, helped me hone in my critical thinking skills to evaluate how each of these perspectives compare and work with each other even though neither one of us were aware of Spiral dynamics at the time. Even though my dad was very blue and orange, he still had a little bit of green and a slight bit of yellow in him. It was just enough to spark something in me. I would say that if you are pretty well integrated to green or higher, it would be easier to guide your child towards critical thinking rather than solely relying on obedience like blue or orange might (blue is largely dogmatic while orange is oriented around a hierarchy). So parenting should be focused on building and developing critical thinking skills so one would be prepared to handle the adult world by him/herself and deal with any problems that might come up. That said, I think it's also important to incorporate the lower stages in a healthy way so that the kid can integrate all of the colors. This would be a more yellow approach because while it doesn't see a false equivalency with how high or low a color is, it sees the value of each one of them as a building block. Beige is simply integrated by innate survival mechanisms, so that is basically providing for your kid. Purple is building a bond with the kid when they are still a child so that they have a healthy attachment style to their family/tribe. I remember seeing else where on this forum where people asked if it's possible to skip stages. I think everyone does go through all the stages. Many of us went through Beige to Red at an early age in a healthy way so it feels like we skipped it if that makes sense. Red is the more ego-centric stage which starts at around age 2 ish (i gotta refer back to developmental psych so i may not know the specifics but it starts young). Egos at this stage are still very important in developing a healthy sense of self. After all, to transcend the ego, one needs to have a well integrated ego in the first place. Around this time and onward, i think its important to build a healthy sense of self with positive reinforcement and a lot of encouragement (telling your child he/she is valued, loved, beautiful, smart etc.). This is important in combating future negative beliefs. To pass this stage on to stage blue, it's important to have solid boundaries with the kid (i.e. no hitting, no screaming, no *insert destructive thing that small children tend to do). This incorporates a sense of discipline in the child in a firm way. The more efficiently stage red and blue are integrated, the faster you can delve into additional spiral stages. Blue/Red should be stages, not what you do permanently going forward so even though i am saying firm boundaries are important to have, i don't mean indoctrinate your kid into a religion or tell your teenager that they can't to xyz because "you said so" etc. If this is done right, the kid can probably get into orange and green pretty early (like 6 or 7). I think orange can be integrated by having chores, encouraging productivity in school, learning to be assertive/ standing up for you self etc and really building good habits that will aid in their success going forward. Also, here I think it's important to reduce the "because I said so" attitude as much as possible and instead when enforcing rules, explain to your kids the logic behind the rules. I think at a certain stage it is counter productive to be authoritarian to a kid because then they'll start to rebel often because the rules don't make sense to them. This especially happens with the "because i said so" attitude because firstly it is condescending (not good for establishing open communication, trust, or credibility), and second, at around stage orange, kids will question their parents not necessary in an argumentative way but to understand. As the parent it is important to back those claims up with some sound answers instead of getting your ego into a twist and accusing them of arguing and "talking back". This aids in their critical thinking skills and even if they don't follow what they said, you still planted the seed of what to expect so they can learn by making their own mistakes. Green, i think can be introduced as early as 5 or so depending on the situation. For example, if your kid comes up to you at age 5 asking you "where do babies come from" you can take a stage green approach and explain how the sperm meets the egg and the baby form in the womb (instead of going into how sex works since that may not be age appropriate and most kids aren't even thinking in that train of thought). Speaking of which, green parenting is very positive, encouraging of different cultures, etc. Some ways to integrate green is encouraging self love, having an open dialog about sex in age appropriate ways, critiquing things in the media (like watching TV with your kid and asking them about what they saw and how it relates to treating other people well), encouraging boundaries for privacy and bodily autonomy (praising your kid when they tell an adult that they aren't comfortable with hugs and they let that adult know for example), regulating emotions effectively yet not suppressing them. Encourage them to empathize with other people and see their perspectives and emotions when they get in trouble with others. Create a space where they can open up and vulnerable about their lives with you so that you can guide them through life instead of being like an authoritarian dictator. That also means being attuned with their mental health and how they are coping with the world around them. Those are some ways but im pretty sure there is so much more. Avoid stigmatizing things and creating taboos as they can create shadows in your kids. As far as yellow goes, it comes down to judging where your kid is in the spiral and adjusting how you parent to integrate the previous stages accordingly. It comes down to what is developmentally good for the child in the long run so that they can be functioning adults. Once the other stages are exhausted and integrated efficiently, stage yellow shouldn't be too hard to reach. Often times, in respective of my personal journey, I find that an effective way to move from green to yellow is to integrate anything you might be missing from the lower stages to where you can see the healthy use for each of them. Another way is to encourage thinking about how things work systemically and some of the short comings of green. To do all of this effectively, the child needs to move through each stage at their own pace so results can vary depending on individual circumstances. Finally, when the kid has a healthy ego with minimum shadows and can see how relative different perspectives are, they can transcend that and move into turquoise. Idk how that would turn out but i think it's good to drop hints about things like nonduality etc. in passing so that the seeds are planted and the kid can explore them at their own pace.

Ok I have wondered the same thing tbh. Here is what I think. I know this is long but I really contemplated about this in the past because if I choose to have kids, I want them to have an easier time developing than I did with my parents. You don't have to necessarily movie to a Scandanavian country to raise your kid in a stage green/yellow way. I think what you do inside your house is incredibly important. If anything, I think it's a good idea for kids to witness how different people from the spiral act to sharpen their critical thinking skills. From personal experience, my home life was pretty orange/blue, my neighborhood was green, and I went on many trips to India to visit family, many of whom who are very solidly blue. So i was surrounded by numerous perspectives. My dad, whom I will credit to helping me move up the spiral, helped me hone in my critical thinking skills to evaluate how each of these perspectives compare and work with each other even though neither one of us were aware of Spiral dynamics at the time. Even though my dad was very blue and orange, he still had a little bit of green and a slight bit of yellow in him. It was just enough to spark something in me. I would say that if you are pretty well integrated to green or higher, it would be easier to guide your child towards critical thinking rather than solely relying on obedience like blue or orange might (blue is largely dogmatic while orange is oriented around a hierarchy). So parenting should be focused on building and developing critical thinking skills so one would be prepared to handle the adult world by him/herself and deal with any problems that might come up. That said, I think it's also important to incorporate the lower stages in a healthy way so that the kid can integrate all of the colors. This would be a more yellow approach because while it doesn't see a false equivalency with how high or low a color is, it sees the value of each one of them as a building block. Beige is simply integrated by innate survival mechanisms, so that is basically providing for your kid. Purple is building a bond with the kid when they are still a child so that they have a healthy attachment style to their family/tribe. I remember seeing else where on this forum where people asked if it's possible to skip stages. I think everyone does go through all the stages. Many of us went through Beige to Red at an early age in a healthy way so it feels like we skipped it if that makes sense. Red is the more ego-centric stage which starts at around age 2 ish (i gotta refer back to developmental psych so i may not know the specifics but it starts young). Egos at this stage are still very important in developing a healthy sense of self. After all, to transcend the ego, one needs to have a well integrated ego in the first place. Around this time and onward, i think its important to build a healthy sense of self with positive reinforcement and a lot of encouragement (telling your child he/she is valued, loved, beautiful, smart etc.). This is important in combating future negative beliefs. To pass this stage on to stage blue, it's important to have solid boundaries with the kid (i.e. no hitting, no screaming, no *insert destructive thing that small children tend to do). This incorporates a sense of discipline in the child in a firm way. The more efficiently stage red and blue are integrated, the faster you can delve into additional spiral stages. Blue/Red should be stages, not what you do permanently going forward so even though i am saying firm boundaries are important to have, i don't mean indoctrinate your kid into a religion or tell your teenager that they can't to xyz because "you said so" etc. If this is done right, the kid can probably get into orange and green pretty early (like 6 or 7). I think orange can be integrated by having chores, encouraging productivity in school, learning to be assertive/ standing up for you self etc and really building good habits that will aid in their success going forward. Also, here I think it's important to reduce the "because I said so" attitude as much as possible and instead when enforcing rules, explain to your kids the logic behind the rules. I think at a certain stage it is counter productive to be authoritarian to a kid because then they'll start to rebel often because the rules don't make sense to them. This especially happens with the "because i said so" attitude because firstly it is condescending (not good for establishing open communication, trust, or credibility), and second, at around stage orange, kids will question their parents not necessary in an argumentative way but to understand. As the parent it is important to back those claims up with some sound answers instead of getting your ego into a twist and accusing them of arguing and "talking back". This aids in their critical thinking skills and even if they don't follow what they said, you still planted the seed of what to expect so they can learn by making their own mistakes. Green, i think can be introduced as early as 5 or so depending on the situation. For example, if your kid comes up to you at age 5 asking you "where do babies come from" you can take a stage green approach and explain how the sperm meets the egg and the baby form in the womb (instead of going into how sex works since that may not be age appropriate and most kids aren't even thinking in that train of thought). Speaking of which, green parenting is very positive, encouraging of different cultures, etc. Some ways to integrate green is encouraging self love, having an open dialog about sex in age appropriate ways, critiquing things in the media (like watching TV with your kid and asking them about what they saw and how it relates to treating other people well), encouraging boundaries for privacy and bodily autonomy (praising your kid when they tell an adult that they aren't comfortable with hugs and they let that adult know for example), regulating emotions effectively yet not suppressing them. Encourage them to empathize with other people and see their perspectives and emotions when they get in trouble with others. Create a space where they can open up and vulnerable about their lives with you so that you can guide them through life instead of being like an authoritarian dictator. That also means being attuned with their mental health and how they are coping with the world around them. Those are some ways but im pretty sure there is so much more. Avoid stigmatizing things and creating taboos as they can create shadows in your kids. As far as yellow goes, it comes down to judging where your kid is in the spiral and adjusting how you parent to integrate the previous stages accordingly. It comes down to what is developmentally good for the child in the long run so that they can be functioning adults. Once the other stages are exhausted and integrated efficiently, stage yellow shouldn't be too hard to reach. Often times, in respective of my personal journey, I find that an effective way to move from green to yellow is to integrate anything you might be missing from the lower stages to where you can see the healthy use for each of them. Another way is to encourage thinking about how things work systemically and some of the short comings of green. To do all of this effectively, the child needs to move through each stage at their own pace so results can vary depending on individual circumstances. Finally, when the kid has a healthy ego with minimum shadows and can see how relative different perspectives are, they can transcend that and move into turquoise. Idk how that would turn out but i think it's good to drop hints about things like nonduality etc. in passing so that the seeds are planted and the kid can explore them at their own pace.