Are My Goals Realistic?

[Guest]

I want to:

Become a yogi and reach the highest levels of enlightenment.

Get my Ph.D in math and become a professional researcher.

Be in great health and be really fit.

Be exceptionally socially skilled, especially with women.

 

Is this too much to do? Any one of these would take insane amounts of work and dedication-- I'm not sure if I'm BSing myself by telling myself I can do all these.

I'd like to achieve mastery in all these domains within the next 20 or 30 years.

Edited March 14, 2016 by Saitama

[Anlib]

If you first become enlightend, your desres might changes

[Toby]

Of course they are realistic. Just for clarification:

• a Yogi can be highly evolved without being fully enlightened. I heard that Papaji met a Yogi who could materialize all kinds of things like food but was not enlightened until he met Papaji.
• for mathematics you need the interest, an above average IQ and some willingness to put in work. Then it is easy to achieve it. Otherwise it is not possible. I studied mathematics for some time and there are dudes with enormous work ethics AND high IQs. It's almost impossible keep up with them, if you lack the interest, IQ or drive.
• social skills... depends where you start. from the people I studied math with there were like 5% who were really good in math, socially and with women. One Professor was a womanizer. So it's possible. But if you don't have the personality for it, it's not possible imo. Which doesn't mean you cannot be in a fulfilling relationship with a beautiful woman.
• but keep in mind, your egoic motivations and drives will fall away with enlightenment. so if it's just ego, your interests will change big time.
• assuming you're like 20 years old it's possible within 15-20 years

[Guest]

@Toby Thanks for the input. I was hoping enlightenment might actually make other goals easier since I'll have no internal struggle.  The academics is probably not egoic, but I'm not so sure about the women. I'm actually not sure whether I want to be very good with women at all, celibacy sounds tempting, but I think it might be fun to be good with women.

[Toby]

@Saitama nobody knows. I know for example one austrian spiritual teacher that has a master-degree in math I guess, is quite social and had on his spiritual path a lot of enjoyments and sex. I don't know if he could have been a professor. But today he is not working in that field anymore but is just a spiritual teacher afaik.

I guess Shinzen Young also studied math after being into spirituality for some time. I guess he also speaks spanish and japanese. He said meditation helped him very much with it.

Another guy called Rama Tirtha was a math-professor and later became fully realized. I don't know the details though how it all played out.

Edited March 14, 2016 by Toby

[Kevin Dunlop]

It doesnt matter if the goals are realistic if you enjoy the path these goals take you on in the moment.

 

[Guest]

@Kevin Dunlop I understand where you're coming from,but I would like to be somewhat pragmatic. It will have an impact on whether or not I will pursue all these things simultaneously or weed out the less essential.  For example, if it's not all realistic, I'm not going to waste time chasing tail when it would hurt career advancement.

[Clay]

Your goals are entirely achievable and realistic, but they do seem to require an extraordinary amount of discipline. How about trying something like this: spend a day tackling all 4 of these goals; partition your time to gain at least one significant step in each of these 4 areas. If you can successfully spend a day doing that, then it would imply that you have time for each of these things. This way of partitioning the goals may not be how you want to do it in general, but just doing it like that for one day could be a good test to your current abilities. Regardless of this test though, I think your goals are achievable, and there exists a path of decisions that will enable you to achieve all of your goals.

[Leo Gura]

@Saitama No reason why you couldn't.

Goals #2 and #4 might drop out though if you get deep enough into enlightenment.

Then again, there's no reason you can't do a math PhD and enlightenment. Enlightenment doesn't negate science. It just puts it into proper perspective.