Actualized.org Video Summaries!

[Loving Radiance]

From Julian Lucas' YouTube comment. I edited it a bit.

@Leo Gura Can you re-heart the comment? He apparently edited it and it got lost in the process. Would be better so that more people see the notes on YouTube.

 

461. Should You Go To College? - Common Traps & Mistakes

General points:

• Is college leading me to the life I want? Take a big-picture perspective for this.
• Between ages 15-25 are the critical years to build the foundation for your life. Most waste this time w/ videogames, partying, drugs and friends.
• Think independently and consciously about what you want from life now.
• Most time and focus should be spent contemplating and strategizing to then reach what you want. Clarity is critical.
• Experience is also crucial for discovering what you want. Get more experience.
• Tailor your career and life to who you are by first discovering your personality. That leads to the best life possible.
• Pick a career your also passionate about (even if not as profitable). Passion will make up for that.
• Where will the paycheck be coming from after graduation? Create a solid plan to escape wage slavery early on and go above and beyond.
• Trap of most people: they try one thing, get stuck in it and end up doing something they hate
  • Generate less value
    • Less Money
• Distinguish between fantasy and reality of a job/career. Use experience for that.
• You're only going to get from life what you put into it.

Cons of university education

1. DEBT
   1. Student Loans (especially in US)
      1. Can drive one deep in wage slavery
   2. Also depends on family prospects and location of university
2. Low-quality education
   1. They are not teaching you how to think
   2. Indoctrination & Memorization
   3. Practical, Important Life Skills aren't taught for success in life
3. Many Courses aren't practical for a career & thus are a waste of time

Pros of university education

1. Socialization & Dating
   1. However, a big trap is that most people get into shallow, immature relationships that don't help build a foundation in a career. Find a balance.
2. Education on dangers of ideologies and cults.
3. Provides the foundation for people who are clear on becoming a lawyer, doctor or engineer.
   1. College is designed as a 'meat-grinder' system
   2.  Self-Education: Where most success stems from and what employers are looking for (independent projects)
      1. Much harder but way more rewarding. If you're going to pick a 'soft major'(e.g. philosophy, history), tell your parents about your future self-education plan and prove you're serious.
      2. Don't confuse university education for self-education. Formal education is designed for the lowest common denominator. Top grades and degrees aren't as important as independent projects and portfolios. Most real skills are learnt outside of uni.
      3. Invest in multi-perspectival, non-ideological self-education.

Critical skills to learn outside of university

• Business, Sales and Marketing
• Self-Help and Personal Development
• Human & own Psychology
• Emotional Mastery
• Dating, Relationships and Sexuality
• Speaking & Writing Skills
• History
• Spirituality, Philosophy, Epistemology & Existential Investigation
• Awareness, Mindfulness and Consciousness

4 key lessons

1. Clarity, on what you want and who you are.
2. Tailor life to who you are, your unique strengths and passions. Want a life only you can live.
3. Lifelong learning, every day.
4. Be proactive because it won't just 'work out'.

Edited November 17, 2020 by Loving Radiance
@

[Loving Radiance]

204. How To Stop Backsliding - How To Stop Procrastinating

 

280. The Trap Of Projection, Especially Onto Teachers & Mentors

 

370. How To Contemplate Using A Journal

 

390. How To Do Self-Inquiry

 

Edited December 18, 2020 by Loving Radiance

[Guest EmptyVase]

How Fear Works Part 1 & 2

Fear.pdf

[Loving Radiance]

298. AL-LAD Trip Report - A Powerful Tool For Consciousness Work

On AL-LAD:

• LSD analogue
• shorter lasting (8-10h), more visual, less mindfucking (less heavy on the mind) than LSD
• more prolonged, mellow and easier to handle than 5-MeO-DMT (more like a precision tool)
• insights are clearer than those of psilocybin

 

Psychedelics in self-development & consciousness work:

• not used for pleasure, recreation or 'having a fun time' (like playing games, watching TV, going clubbing)
• substances are not used as a crutch (even coffee) but rather as a shamanic tool for growth/expansion
• understanding reality & consciousness
• show the potential of what is possible in spiritual practices like meditation
• not playing around
• genuine intention to grow consciousness
• focus on insights deliver them

 

Procedure

1. 1h meditation
2. 20min setting intentions to grow consciousness in areas that one need to develop myself in
   1. visualizations
   2. affirmations
3. If feeling anxious, get into a good mood ("state") by dancing, joking around...

 

Beginning

• taking 150mg
• dancing till onset
• smooth & mellow come up, no nausea
• feeling good in body (body high)
• brain fuzz
  • feels like a head cold
• heightened body awareness
• meditative state of being completely present
• slow, steady thought stream
  • thoughts are not all over the place but rather directed and focused
  • all references about one topic are connected
• high creativity state
  • simple brilliant ideas
    • insight: creativity is divine rather than human
  • inspirations flow out which are partially lost in translation due to language's symbolic nature
• almost no visuals
• connection to the beauty of the world

 

Peak (after 2-3h)

• synthesis of years of knowledge and understanding into new insights
  • beauty/value of being
  • ineffability of being
  • appreciation of human context (meaning the story of being human with human life living on a rock in space; related to content-structure lens) by "seeing" the larger context of nothingness
  • conscious of groundless nature of reality
    • infinite surfaces/contexts
  • ego death (perhaps also due to prior breakthroughs on other psychedelics)
  • infinite surfaces float in a sea of nothingness
  • disruption of sense of reality: seeing no difference between enlightenment & insanity
  • a glimpse of the infinite: being conscious of infinite depth, perspective
• surrender & acceptance of insanity (of "reality makes no sense")
  • insanity becomes "functional" and is realized to be sanity whereas conventional sanity is realized to be insanity
  • insanity is incommunicable
• full trip lasts for 6-8h, sober after 10-12h

 

Lasting effects

• words & analysis are meaningless & futile in consciousness work because of the inherent nature of being symbols
  • However, words & analysis are foundational for this work. They are to be transcended.
• practical knowing that there is more practice to do now as years of preparation were theory
• knowing there's no desire for consensus reality (like in conventional science)
• shift in core values: thirst for deep consciousness work, less attachment to material success, business success...
• more serious & passionate about [industrial-grade] meditation practice
  • every practice is an opportunity of changing reality
• body energy changed
  • before it was chronic fatigue of not being comfortable in body and now it's feeling the body how it's supposed to be felt, like being cured [well, that aged well: the change is not lasting] - psychedelics potentially cure chronic fatigue
• recognition of how much of the day is spend in "monkey mind" rather than just being
  • "tame" the monkey mind
• deep sense of peace as obstacles were faced
• open to letting life unfold without intention to control it

 

Lessons for viewer:

• psychedelics are a powerful tool (assuming proper usage and care)
• AL-LAD is a good beginner psychedelic
• A. is a good for integration of breathrough trips (like a companion psychedelic after previous breakthroughs) as integration of these breakthroughs is smoother with this elevated state of consciousness
• don't underestimate party drugs (as they are used recreationally for fun & pleasurable times)
• take time with integration - not more than once a week and take time off to contemplate, reevaluate...
• intentions are important for tripping
  • set deep desire & intent long before you intent to trip
• purify yourself prior to tripping via contemplation & spiritual practice

 

Psychedelics reflect your mind in on itself. Like self-fulfilling prophesies the state of mind gets amplified by psychedelics.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Loving Radiance
formatting

[Loving Radiance]

Blog video Back From 2 Month Break, Updates (upload February 5th 2020)

Balance of creative work & rest

• Possibility of getting oversatiated from over consuming personal development / spiritual content to the point of just consuming it
  • this results in not living life anymore as to not experience the whole range of life because the mind is still immersed and is not truly resting
    • resting allows getting conscious & self-reflective of one's work by recognizing limitations from a detached birds eye view because of the contrast of work & rest
• Pacing oneself (resting, and working with the right endurance & speed) serves long-term sustainability of creative work output
  • all areas of life are better to be seen through the lens of sustainability ("Is this area of my life sustainable? If not, how can I make it sustainable?")
  • undogmatic sustainability includes exhaustive unsustainable work in one area while neglecting other areas (temporary)
• Looking at one's life to be an apple tree:
  • apples are results
    • result-oriented approach isn't healthy as only caring about the apples neglects the roots, trunk, branches, leafs...
  • other parts of the tree are other areas of life that get neglected when one only focusses on the fruits of the work

Creative work -:

• is counterintuitive to manual work
  • being pragmatic & deadline oriented eats up creativity
    • one is most creative (getting ideas & inspirations) when nothing productive is being done
• directed with deadlines gets practical (perfectionsism is restricted)
• seems to be balanced when done in cycles of:
  1. working on a project
  2. finishing the project
  3. time off & resting
  • work with less creativity needs smaller cycles (diurnally and hebdomadally rather than biannually or annually)

Innovation

• That what worked before will not be that which brings your work to the next level
  • being stuck in your old ways of doing creative work will get your work outdated by the competitive innovative work of other creative people
• True Spirituality informs & transforms all areas of life like the way of doing creative work

Role of requisite variety (RV) in life

• Definition from Wikipedia, "If a system is to be stable, the number of states of its control mechanism must be greater than or equal to the number of states in the system being controlled."
• there is not enough RV used when one is stuck on any problem
  • not enough RV manifests in a narrow uncreative approach
  • troubleshooting with try & error has to be so much done that success is inevitable (through lateral thinking & trying out a wide range of solutions; there's now equal/higher RV than the problem)
  • upholding identity is something that often holds back RV
• find root problems in your life and apply RV - one solution will work by chance

Working on projects

• requires focus [insert surprised pikachu face] (eliminating all distractions, creating a working environment)

 

[I edited & sorted points for coherency.]

Edited February 11, 2021 by Loving Radiance
typo

[peqkno]

@Loving Radiance ?

[Rahul yadav]

What Is Wisdom?

format: pdf

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bEwAp9K-_z-OSt32B-yItUgDmTHd-bck/view?usp=sharing

[Moses]

@Rahul yadav  Thank You !? 

[Dayo]

On 2/16/2021 at 9:06 AM, Rahul yadav said:

What Is Wisdom?

format: pdf

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bEwAp9K-_z-OSt32B-yItUgDmTHd-bck/view?usp=sharing

Thanks for this summary.

[longusername12345]

Relationship Advice- The Master Plan for Creating an Amazing Relationship

If you want a successful intimate relationship, you're going to have to deal with the harsh reality that we have a 40% divorce rate and most of the people still in relationships are dysfunctional. The solution is to study the art of sexuality, the opposite sex's psychology, your own psychology, the commons pitfalls in relationships, and work deeply on yourself to fix all the potential hang-ups that could ruin your relationships.

 

Ultimately the way you're going to fix your relationships, is to fix yourself. You cannot control the other person. Controlling other people never works. The only thing you can control is yourself. The only thing you can change is your psychology. You're going to have to do a lot of deep inner personal development work. The only way to get laid, get a relationship, and eventually get married is to really work on yourself.

 

Work on

• Sexual abundance (lots of options, no neediness)- work on yourself to create that abundance- going out and socializing etc
• Finances- get your finances in order, good understanding of money
• Nutrition and Fitness
• Emotional Mastery- fix all your limiting beliefs and change any sort of neurotic behavior

 

Do personal development, take relationships very seriously, and put the responsibility on yourself. Study and analyze all this stuff, then do a lot of introspection. Develop amazing emotional mastery.

[Ismael]

What Are Holons Summary.docx

[Loving Radiance]

In case the attached files are gone, I have written them down below. Note that although edited, I haven't corrected every error.

 

On 19.12.2020 at 2:30 PM, EmptyVase said:

How Fear Works Part 1 & 2

Fear.pdf

417. + 418. How Fear Works - The Ultimate Guide To Dealing With Fear

What is Fear?

• A self-control mechanism
• Core survival mechanism – keeps you alive
• Helps you to maintain whatever you identify with
  • Important to understand survival
• Most of our survival is social, cultural and highly conceptual – not that of our body
• Identity is different, so is fear different
• Survival at its most basic
  • Gets you to avoid the stuff that will kill you
  • Not just physically – also psychologically (stuff that kills your self-image)
  • Distorts, how you do your stuff
  • What if there’s something that’s true about reality, but which threatens your identity? Are you ever going to find that thing that’s true?
  • You can’t have an accurate perception of reality if you’re afraid and so long as you’re attached to any kind of identity
• What you are is defined by your fears and what you fear is what you identify as
  • Goes both ways
  • An identity comes with a certain set of fears (mother fears differently)
• Whatever you fear you’re going to be battling with that demon
• You made yourself, your identity, up – admit it
  • You fear losing all your attachments – detach!
  • Attachment creates Fear
• You fear a loss of self: fear is protecting you from losing yourself
  • Epitome of that is death
  • Death is what all fear ultimately boils down to
• Most of your Fear is subtle and on a daily basis
• Hard to work with because it is irrational, relentless and directly attached to your survival
• Doesn’t care about logic, ideals and beliefs
• Brute survival trumps everything else because beliefs, ideals and logic are survival at work
• Fear is a much stronger survival force than logic
• Survival: Fear is the base of the pyramid, the foundation on top of which everything else sits
  • At the top you have logic, ideals etc.
  • Don’t be surprised when your logic doesn’t touch fear

Key misconception about Fear:
“Fear is natural” – Fear is not natural, because it is not an objective fact

• Your mind is constructing the fear
• It’s projecting the fear out of you through the lens of your identity
• It’s your mind interpreting that situation that creates the fear
• All fear is imaginary

Isn’t it normal to have Fear?

• It is normal in the sense that 99.9% of people are lost in fear
• Normality is not a sign of Truth
• There’s no such thing as an objectively dangerous situation – danger is relative to what you identify with
• There’s a deep connection between fear and falsehood/illusion
  • When you’re afraid you’re trapped inside an illusion
  • Illusion feels so real that you don’t know that it’s an illusion
    • This heightens your fear even more
    • Self-fulfilling prophecy

Exercise to Fear

• Can’t be understood in the abstract
• Requires serious mindfulness work, you must get personally acquainted with your own fears
• What is Fear? Bring up a fear and feel it!
  • Vividly reimagine a Fear from memory or something that you’re currently afraid of
  • Bring it back up to the point where you don’t just imagine it in the abstract, but it actually starts to get you a little tinge of it/starts to affect you
  • Almost as though you’re back in that situation
  • Feel what that feels like – where is it located in your body?
  • Try to pinpoint it as much as possible – mindfulness muscle is important for this
• Don’t ask externally for answers to what Fear is – it is inside of YOU!
• If you want to transcend and outgrow fear, you need to change how you react to fear
  • Create a gap, a little breathing room between your fear and your reaction
  • Start to feel the fear in between
  • That’s a counterintuitive move, because every cell in your body wants to react to get you out of the danger and to minimize the fear
• Fear is something that spikes up in you and then you act in some way and afterwards it subsides – you’re glad that it’s over
  • Once you’re out of the fear, you can’t be mindful of it anymore
  • Train yourself to be mindful of fear as it’s happening to you
• Fear is a resistance to a future experience
  • Tells you how to overcome Fear
  • Mind is imagining a future scenario that seems to contradict your identity and how you want to feel and who you think you are
• You have a resistance experiencing fear
• Fear is about refusing to experience things – tolerate experience!
• For you to fear, there needs to be an image in your mind
• The solution is to surrender yourself to the thing that you are afraid of experiencing in the future – live through the thing you fear most
• Don’t run away from fear – accept fear
• Surrendering doesn’t mean to manipulate your way out of fear – face the fear!

Problem with observing Fear:

• Fear doesn’t want to be observed
• Can’t give you enough time to inspect it (e.g. a bear chasing you)
• Fear is an unconscious reaction
• Needs a lot of practice

Macro Fears List

• Not being good enough
• Failure at your career
• Going broke
• Competition in your business
• Partner breaking up with you
• Being alone
• Aging and losing attractiveness
• Health problems
• Never having sex
• Being embarrassed in public
• Wasting money
• Looking stupid
• Other people’s opinion
• People thinking you’re a bad or evil person
• Criticism
• Wrong decision
• Being wrong
• Disappointing family
• Losing your faith or religion
• Sin and hell
• Being seen naked
• Losing your freedom
• Stuck in wage slavery forever
• Gaining weight
• Giving in to your cravings

What are Micro Fears?
“Fears that you feel dozens of times every day”

• Over a hundred micro fears per day without being aware of it
• Dominate your day-to-day life
• Many thoughts dominated by those fears
• Many habits and survival strategies are based on them

Micro Fears List

• Running out of toilet paper
• Getting caught in a lie
• Offending a coworker
• Late to work
• Saying the wrong thing
• Reading an e-mail
• Checking your phone
• Grocery store runs out of an item
• Long line on a Friday night
• Parents catching you jerking off
• Looking someone in the eyes
• Pimples on face
• Losing car keys
• Catching a cold
• Talking to your boss
• Smelly breath
• Something stuck in teeth
• Being pregnant
• Store closing before you get there
• Cleaning your garage
• Doing your taxes
• Paying your rent
• Confronting a person
• Telling parents the truth about something
• Giving hones opinion
• Skipping the gym
• Going to the doctor
• Making a mistake at work
• Forgetting something
• Somebody not texting you back
• Never finding life purpose
• Working overtime
• Someone judging you
• Starting a new project
• Calling someone on the phone
• Checking bank account
• Missing a great opportunity
• Breaking a good habit
• Someone yelling at you
• Creative anxiety

Action Steps

1. Start to notice micro fears
2. Start to observe how fear shapes your behavior
3. Observe how fear affects your thinking
   • Fears are not just in your actions, they’re in your thoughts
   • Start to feel them rather than just reacting from them

Final Notes

• Fear is held in the mind and as tensions in the body
  • Body stores decades of fear in it
  • Fear leads to psychological and physiological problems
• Fear and love are inverse
  • Life is going to present you with fear over and over again so that you can learn how to love it and therefore transcend it
  • Ultimately, you can only overcome fear with consciousness
• Avoidance of fear brings stagnation, a victim mentality and can become extremely pathological
• Fear can be useful (e.g. bear attacking you) and show you a way
• Fear must be worked through with vision and love

Assignment

• Observe your micro fears every single day for seven days
• At the end of each day, write out as many of your micro fears as you can
• Contemplate the following questions:
  • How are these micro fears related to my identity?
  • How am I creating these micro fears?
• Observe how your thoughts are shaped by fear
• Expand the list of your biggest fears and become acquainted with them
  • Contemplate: What am I unwilling to experience?

A warlord invades a Japanese village and everyone in the town either flees or is
slaughtered/enslaved.
The warlord walks up to the village's only Zen temple and the only person left in the temple is an
enlightened monk.
"Surrender to me or I will cut your head off!" says the warlord to the monk. The monk smiles and
seems unfazed.
The warlord is angry. He yells, "You fool! Don't you see that I can run you through with this sword
without even blinking an eye!"
The monk responds, "Don't you see that I can be run through by your sword without blinking an eye."
The warlord is shocked and amazed and drops his sword and kneels to the monk.

Working with Fear

• Recognize & appreciate: that without fear you would be dead
• Whatever you fear is completely irrelevant to others
• Nature of fear is self-biased
• You are projecting your fear onto the situation – it’s relative
• You Fear your Self
• Expand your identity
• You can’t be completely fearless, unless you go hardcore – learn to live with fears
  • Reality is infinite – there is an infinite number of stuff to fear
  • Resolving one individually doesn’t tackle the root problem
  • Completely surrendering your life

Is Fear a thought?

• No, Fear is a feeling – it’s a distinctive feeling
• Feel Fear in your body
  • Thoughts contribute to that feeling, when it arises
  • How much of your Fear are thoughts?
  • Thoughts influence feelings and vice versa – vicious circle
• Try to distinguish Fear from other feelings

Is Truth behind Fear?

• In the absolute sense, all fear is false and inaccurate perception
• In the relative sense, fear can be a valuable indicator of something that’s going to be harmful or dangerous to whatever you identify with being
• Every fear is relative to the survival
• Giving up identity is losing Fear

Is it dangerous to eliminate all Fear? Wouldn’t we be dead if we gave up all Fear?

• If you eliminate all fear, you no longer care whether you are alive
  • If you still care, you haven’t eliminated all fear
  • As long as you’re attached to life you will fear
• Nothing is going to keep you alive, if you fear nothing
• You don’t have to physically die to eliminate fear, but you must be willing to
  • You can surrender to the idea
• The thing that’s going to keep you away from danger is consciousness and wisdom
• If you want to get good at survival what you need is not fear but consciousness & wisdom
• Understanding fear should be done through positive motivation, not “killing/beating” fear

Difference between Fear and Caution

• Fear is a feeling in your body – “I can be terrified of bears”
• Caution is the recognition that something might be dangerous or harmful to you – “I can be cautious of bears when I’m walking through the forest”
• I can be cautious without feeling fear
• Caution is about anticipating likely obstacles and threats
• Condom Example - Fearlessness ≠ Recklessness

Methods for Dealing with Fear

1) Face the Fear head-on

• Bite the bullet and just do it
• If you’re avoiding the fear because you’re afraid, fear will be deepened
• Immediate relief

2) Put yourself proactively to challenging situations

• We get comfortable and find our niche to the point where we get lazy, even if it’s dysfunctional we still get comfortable in it
• Proactively push your comfort-zone
• Things that are pushing you out of what you’ve been used to doing
• Be bold (≠ recklessness)
• “Well now that I’m scared, I have to do it. It’s precisely because I’m uncomfortable that I have to do this.”

3) Training

• Do a lot of practice – gain massive experience to a thing
• Consider the possibility: the only reason you’re afraid of something is simply because you haven’t been exposed to it enough
• Exposure + mindfulness
  • Feel into the fear
  • Repeat many times

4) Mindfulness Practice

• Helps with Fear in general
• Practice feeling very deeply into the fear: all sensations and bodily feelings
• Practice mindfulness anytime or do it as a daily meditation
• Fear comes with a certain ickiness attached to it
• Be mindful enough to notice when a feeling of resistance to the ickiness of the fear is coming up and feel into that resistance – let go resisting, allow yourself to experience the fear

5) Being totally present

• When fear comes up, if you’re able to be totally present (requires meditation skills), notice your mind jumping into the future
  • It’s projecting images of bad stuff that will happen in the future
  • Stop that and ground your mind in the present moment
• There’s nothing to fear about the present moment
• Ultimately, surrender the desire for life

6) Psychedelics

• Put you face to face with death
• Erases dualities between self and other (identifying stops)

7) Kriya Yoga

• Rewires your mind & nervous system

8) Contemplation using a journal

• Contemplating various specific macro- & micro fears
• Contemplating what this fear is, why it is arising, where it came from, what function it is serving & how it is connecting back to your identity

9) Sedona Method

• Letting go technique
• Raises awareness & thus is very powerful
• Feel the fear and let it go

10) Breathing

• Breathing consciously, slowly and deeply as you feel your fear
• Don’t let your body lock up – relax

11) Visualization & Law of Attraction

• Crowd fear out of your mind with positivity
• Overwhelm the fear with positive vision
• Visualize positive situations and a positive life in general
• Visualize daily for 5/10 minutes
• Be a proactive creator of your life rather than sitting back and letting life happen to you

12) Love

• Opposite of Fear
• Ultimate solution to Fear
• In situations of fear, simply practice and experience love
• Be grateful and more appreciative of life and all of the opportunities and situations that you find yourself in
  • Gratitude is a form of Love
  • The more conscious you become, the more grateful you become for ordinary life
• Gratitude practice: 5/10 minutes every morning just being grateful and feeling it in your heart
• Selfless service
  • When you feel afraid, do something selfless for another person
  • Fear is selfishness incarnated – selflessness is required

Fears of other people & using it for positivity

• Notice that knowing somebodies fear allows you to predict their behavior
• Get inside their mind and figure it out
• when you exploit other people’s fears or make egoistic moves, this can create bad karma which will create suffering for you
• helping others with their fears help contributing positivity to this world
  • inspire people

Conclusion

• there is no magic trick for overcoming fear
• your whole life is for facing yourself, the universe (you fear you ultimately)
• you’re afraid of love
• avoiding fear will have disastrous results in your life
• you’re being pushed to expand into infinity, but you’re too afraid to expand too quickly
• the surest way to fail at life is to allow yourself to be crippled by fear, and to not be bold but to be meek and to make choices that are run by fear an to succumb to your own fears
• you’re exploring your own self
• life can be overwhelming because reality is so vast
  • life needs to be lived bold
  • life is risky
• fearlessness means that you experience the fear, but you don’t succumb to it, you don’t let it dispirit you
• fearfulness is when you succumb to you fear and you are not in control of how you behave

What is the most important quality you need to succeed in life?
Fearlessness (Consciousness, Love)

 

On 16.2.2021 at 9:06 AM, Rahul yadav said:

What Is Wisdom?

format: pdf

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bEwAp9K-_z-OSt32B-yItUgDmTHd-bck/view?usp=sharing

464. What Is Wisdom? - The Ultimate Guide To Wisdom

To become wise, study the consequences of fools.

You need to contemplate for your own what wisdom is to understand the value listening to video alone won't help.

What is wisdom?
It’s a keen discernment, its good judgment, its having proper prioritiesThere is no good life without wisdom.

• Wisdom comes from consciousness
• Highest wisdom is infinite love / selflessness. [Existential/Absolute view]
• A person who puts higher values above lower values
• Wise people are deliberate and thoughtful in the way they approach life and rely on contemplation, they don’t take themselves for granted, self reflective, introspective.
• Wise people are existentially oriented (doing something beyond survival, comfort, pleasure)
• Wise people exhibit existential humility, rather a epistemic humility
• Wise people take the possibility of self deception seriously
• They exceptionally openminded
• They take the serious possibility of might be fooling themselves
• Wise people are massively consciously experienced
• Wisdom is also holistic and big picture understanding of life
• Value Truth requires lot of contemplation to appreciate value of Truth & to be interested in it is already a sign of wisdom
• Wisdom is non judgmental, the wisest are least judgmental
• Keen understanding of counterintuitive nature of life, ability to see twisted way and inversions which life takes, to be ableto foresee that without you face hitting that
• Long term thinking
• Patience and willing to wait for what it wants
• Independence of thought and contemplate every situation through for yourself. To derive your own answers rather than blindly taking answers. How could you trust any one to give you answers coz even they could be wrong,
• Wisdom is nuanced, recognizing the complexity of life, difficulties and subtleties of different situations of life and there are rarely things black and white
• Wise people learn very deeply from their own mistakes, and they never make the same mistake twice
• Very flexible with their minds and can see errors in their world views
• They can tolerate paradox & and contradictions
• Wisdom is objective, neutral and unbiased
• The more wise you become the more you become aware of your self biases
• Wise is skeptical, a wise person doubts himself first and foremost in healthy forms of skepticism and has a keen nose for smelling out bullshit
• The wise person is principled, they have integrity and they stick to that principles when it is difficult vs religiously dogmatic (contemplate why integrity is important.)
• Wisdom is self-disciplining / intrinsic motivation, learning from dangers of undisciplined
• Wise person has internal locus of control
• The wise takes responsibility and doesn’t blame others and understands life problems comes through us.
• The wise person doesn’t escape emotional labor, faces things head-on and doesn’t run away form doing difficult things
• Wise tends to control his cravings, isn't a slave to cravings
• The wise person highly values education
• Wisdom understands life is exquitely balanced on razors edge, its about understanding not taking extreme positions but finding that balance points every where in life and understanding balance points is never in the middle
• Have high emotional intelligence
• Wisdom can admit I don’t know ( the one true thing I know is I know nothing -Socrates )
• Wisdom is able to admit that its wrong, able to genuinely apologize, doesn’t cover things
• Wisdom is able to forgive and let things go
• Wisdom is also very careful when giving advice because giving advice is great responsibility. Different people face differentsituation one thing which has worked for me doesn’t mean it will work for you. Being careful on not to project your situation on someone else
• Wisdom is benevolent compassionate and selfless
• Wisdom values solitude and silence
• wisdom is tier2 cognition from spiral dynamics. You transcend survival values and need to being values and needs
• Has meta perspective.
• Makes implicit into explicit
• Build good habits
• Wisdom is living dynamic force within you that you cultivate itThere is no good life without wisdom.

How do you practically develop wisdom

• Consciousness work
• Self-reflection, introspection.
• Deep questioning of everything -the more obvious something is the more you should question
• Derive your own answers and don’t ask others for answers
• A deep curiosity about live which is necessary to fuel you for doing this work.
• Massive experience, failure, and suffering in a conscious way.
• Practice selflessness, contemplate what is selflessness and why it is high and ideal value. Wisdom αselflessness
• Simply value wisdom, study wisdom, study wise people. With the pursuit and embodiment of wisdom
• Study foolishness, the more you're shocked and horrified, the more you see consequences of foolishness the less you want to be a fool
• Study your own psychology and self very deeply
• Study the trickery of your own mind
• Read high quality books
• Study history learn lessons from history
• Explore diverse perspective. Go meta on perspective, try to realize the limitation of every perspective.
• Observation without judgement.
• Self-education and lifelong learning, the more wisdom you'll develop is after university
• Psychedelics will skyrocket your wisdom
• Meditation & solitude.
• Solo retreat
• Stop chasing pleasure.
• Spend time contemplating what is wisdom
• Ask powerful Question like when you know what wisdom is
  • Is this wise?
  • What would be the wisest move in the situation
  • How am I being a fool in life?
  • How can I become more wise?
  • If you're listening to some speaker ask yourself, "Is what he's saying coming from the place of wisdom?" [can immediately cut through bullshit]
    • If your parents are giving you advice, you can ask is this advice coming from wisdom?
  • What is the wisest way to live life?

Opposites of wisdom - The fool
Essence of foolishness is poor judgement and lack of discernment

• The fool has poor sense of priorities and places the low priorities above the high. (sex, drugs, fame, money above Truth)
• is also lost in minutia and peddyness because the fool is wrapped up in survival like a hamster in a wheel
• is ignorant and proud of it, the biggest fools are aggressively ignorant.
• is unwilling to admit a mistake.
• Arrogance is the key characteristics of a fool.
• underestimates the depths of problems in life. Life has existential dilemmas that fool is completely oblivious to
• tends to be anti intellectual doesn’t value education
• doesn’t contemplate or self reflects
• doesn’t see value in truth and confuses Truth with whatever serves him or fool confuses his beliefs, ideology, dogmas for Truth what ever reinforces my existing beliefs that’s the Truth.
• lacks consciousness
• is oblivious to the problems of self deception
• externalizes the deception that it is coming from the outside
• will apply false skepticism and weaponize skepticism
• is inexperienced and also give strong opinions in fields which they have no experience
• sees wisdom as foolishness.
• is deeply committed to staying a fool.
• will try to get you down to his level
• doesn’t understand and value importance of openmindedness and will resist any efforts to open his mind.
• tends to be very judgmental
• is rash, impatient, agitated and emotionally very reactive.
• is myopic, quick results oriented, cannot plan very long.
• is egotistical and selfish.
• follows the mob, is tribalistic, is highly conformist
• The majority of conspiracy theorists are fools. They think they are questioning the conformist but are doing in a toxic way and subscribing to their own conspiracy.
• tends to be a believer, blind follower and dogmatic
• cannot control his cravings
• is open to be exploited (advertisement companies, right wing media)
• is undisciplined
• avoids responsibility. "The amount of responsibility α wiseness" the more fool someone is the harder it is to convince them of responsibility of their problem
• is self biased, partial and partisan. The fool cannot see past his self biases
• takes reality and things for granted
• tends to be very entitled and expects things to come very easily, doesn’t appreciate the cost of it. (the fool expects good government, but doesn’t understand good government comes from conscious citizens)
• lacks balance and moderation
• doesn’t learn from mistakes but doubles down on it.
• is unable to genuinely apologize
• has a short attention span and is easily distracted by things, spends most of the time distracted by minutia and not focusing on really important stuff in life (like existential view)
• doesn’t invest in herself long term - no precautions before the cause.
• avoids emotional labor
• cannot admit I don’t know. The fool thinks he knows everything about everything.
• holds grudges and cannot let things go
• talks a lot without thinking. Blabbermouthery.
• loves to engage in gossips and speculation
• will push advice upon you & Even his own advice isn't working for him coz he got it from bible.
• rationalizes a lot and uses justification & logic and doesn’t understand the limitations and deceptions of self justification.
• Tier 1 is various levels of foolishness
• thinks their foolish leaders are actually genius
• is spiritually disconnected from existence

Examples of fools

• Trump
• Stage blue people
• Drug addicts
• Conspiracy theorists like Alex jones
• The tribalism of sports. Sporting fanatics
• Gambling, smoking, hedonism
• Not using a condom
• Gossip tabloids
• Junk media
• Chasing get rich quick schemes
• Cheating peoples
• Criminal behavior
• Staying in a toxic relationship
• Anger blame
• Scapegoating
• Joining cults and ideologies
• Wasting life - smoking weed and playing games.

[FlyingLotus]

470. Notes & Timestamps for “What Is Integrity? - The Role Of Integrity In Life”

“Integrity: The choice between what’s convenient and what’s right.” —Tony Dungy

“Integrity: the state of being whole or undivided.” —Oxford dictionary

 

            When people think about Integrity it’s often from a dogmatic, unhealthy Spiral Dynamics stage Blue perspective.  This makes people overlook its importance.

            However, Integrity is way more important than you think.  It’s paramount for living a good life, for success, psychological health, ego development, spiritual work, and discovering truth and love.  You can’t get the benefits of truth, beauty, love and God while being a devil who lacks Integrity.

            The self-actualizing person without Integrity is rather pathetic and broken.

           Exercise:  Think of a person in your life with Low Integrity. (6:49)

• How do you feel about that person?
• What impact do they have on you?
• How well does their life run?  How smoothly?
• How happy is this person?
• What kind of results does this person get in life?
• Are they highly successful? Spiritually developed?  Loving?

            Now, think of someone with High Integrity and ask the same questions…Notice a difference?

 

            -If you only have integrity externally but not internally you really don't have integrity. That actually creates a schizophrenic reality between the face you show to others and your private inner world. (12:50)

            -What is the opposite of integrity? A very dense, fearful, insecure ego that is trying to survive by any means possible. (aka: opportunism, corruption, devilry, hypocrisy)

            -If you don’t understand integrity you won’t see how your lack of Integrity is responsible for many of your problems in life.

            -Would you rather work with/marry/buy from/interact with someone with High Integrity or Low Integrity?

 

            -Notice that low integrity leaders always crash and burn, even if they have short-lived success (22:00).  People don’t want to follow a devil in the longterm.

            -Integrity and your life’s work.  Excellent art and creative work require integrity.  If you lack Integrity, you’ll just opportunistically follow the money instead of following your true calling or how to contribute to the world.

            -Your work needs a spiritual dimension to help you build the good life and be at the top of your game.  Your business should have a soul beyond earning money.

            -Integrity is rare because it’s more difficult than just being opportunistic (30:46).

            -The world is going to lure you in with shortcuts in traps to get you to back down from your artistic values.

            -Do you want to be a leader with high integrity or low integrity?  What kind of leaders does society need? (38:00)

            -It’s easy for a con man to fool people with low integrity, but not someone with high integrity. Low Integrity people are very predictable. They will lie, cheat, steal, deceive and exploit at any chance they get. (40:55)

 

            -Low integrity people have a fragmented psyche, which creates a lot of suffering and collateral damage. (47:40)

            -A fragmented psyche will seek out money, power, pleasure, etc, but what it really wants is wholeness, integration and love.  The way a broken psych tries to heal itself is itself broken.

           It's applying brokenness on brokenness, so it never really integrates and heals.  To heal requires consciousness and the willingness to accept the costs of integration.

            -Your lack of Integrity leads to an inability to love.

            -There's a deep relationship between love, truth, Integrity, wholeness and ego.

 

            -Truth is Integrity, so truth itself must be integrous. Why?  Because truth is whole.  Truth is what is; it can't be anything else.  Truth has no room for non-truth within it.  It’s so absolute. It's so all-encompassing. It is what it is. Falsehood and deception is you pretending and playing games about how things are.

            -Truth must be integrated with itself so truth literally is integrity.  We humans live in our fantasies, spinning narratives in our minds. (58:33)

            -The Ego mind is fragmented and partial about which experiences it's willing to accept and which ones it rejects (1:01:00).  That’s not “wrong,” per se, but there’s no satisfaction in it.  You run around accepting and rejecting reality in this partial fashion, and that’s called survival of the Ego.

            -Consciousness is Truth because Consciousness is all there is. Consciousness completely embraces all of itself. The universe doesn't need to lie to itself.  Humans and Egos need to lie to themselves to gain an advantage.

            -The problem is the ego is a fragment of the entire universe, aka: a fragment of Consciousness. The ego’s survival depends upon a lack of integrity. To survive as a little part of the whole universe, you have to be committed to your little identity, no matter what it does to the rest of the system.

            -Commitment to a particular religious identity (Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc) requires a lack of integrity because you’re not integrating other identities, or the whole universe.  That leads to defense mechanisms to enforce the smallness of your identity’s worldview.  To admit there’s something beyond your worldview means admitting you were wrong.  The Ego doesn’t like to admit it’s wrong.

            -The core of Integrity is intellectual and epistemic integrity (1:10:10). How do you know anything? You have to know where you're deceiving yourself so you don’t fool yourself. By doing that you’re aligning yourself closer to truth.  You have to study self-deception very thoroughly to reach high levels of Integrity.

 

            -It’s easy to construct a facade of success by creating success on a rotten foundation (1:17:25).  The problem is the facade is fragile and you’re insecure about it.  This makes the ego defensive and dogmatic in its worldview.  Deep down you know your life isn’t grounded on something true.

            -When you are conscious of absolute truth, when you are conscious of absolute love, it’s so empowering because it’s absofuckinglutly unshakable.  Truth needs no defense. (1:20:00)

Living a good life is founded upon honesty with oneself.  Dishonesty prevents you from achieving higher states of consciousness because Consciousness is absolute truth.

 

            -Why not take the easy route? (1:23:50)  Paradoxically, the cost of doing it the easy way ends up being greater. Why does everything in life revolve around truth? because truth is the only f****** thing there!  The more your life is aligned with things that don't exist, the worse your life gets.  Eventually your illusion collapses and you suffer for that.  Without integrity you will be opportunistic and easily tempted into falsehood.

            -Lack of integrity also brings pain, but the bad kind of that pain that won't grow you.  Bad pain is the karmic consequences of devilry.

            -When you have low Integrity you can't trust yourself and that leads to insecurity (1:28:28).  So you take shortcuts, which lead to more problems, which lead to more shortcuts to deal with the consequences of those problems, and then it turns into this endless downward cycle.

You can’t effectively lie to others without lying to yourself.  When you lie to yourself you disconnect from the only thing you have.  You are the only thing there is in life, there's nothing but you.  This whole thing is you; life is you.  Life is God playing hide and seek with itself.  Dividing and reuniting with itself.

            -With Low Integrity, it becomes difficult for you to become successful (1:35:10). Even if you’re a con artist you have to put in the hours and effort to scam people, which requires at least some discipline and integrity.

 

            -Low Integrity leads to learned helplessness. (1:36:30)

            -The more you fail to follow through on your goal and values, the lower your self-esteem drops, which lowers your sense of self-efficacy, which makes you feel like a victim in the world.  You feel like you don't have much control over over life anymore because you’ve failed so many times. (It’s also important to learn how to reframe failures.)

            -Leading a life of High Integrity and self honesty, is only difficult if you're really attached to the Ego.  You could joyously surrender the Ego. It’ll still be difficult, but it's a good, empowering challenge.

            -Notice that when you encounter or see acts of high integrity, they will actually make you cry with tears of joy and appreciation.(1:40:43)

              (Eg: Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, Braveheart) 

            -Why do these movies make us emotional?  Your mind and psyche are connected to a universal Spirit which is God, but it’s clouded through layers of ego, survival and defense mechanisms.  But, something pierces through the veil of all that human ego shit, through all the nonsense and lies and manipulation.  It cuts right through and connects you to truth, love and God.

 

            -Love is animating the entire universe, but it’s been fragmented and polarized through various limited egos. It’s like white light that gets polarized through a prism into a rainbow of colour. So as a human, you're one of those rainbow colours. As the universe or God Consciousness, you’re pure white light. You’re all of them integrated.

            -So, what's really happening is that your spirit, the god in you, is intuiting on a deeper level than your conscious, logical understanding, that the highest good in the universe is love.

            -So when you see selfless actions, or integrous actions, loving actions, self-sacrificing actions, when you see this depicted onscreen or in real life, it brings tears to your eyes because it shows you who you really are, or who you could be if you did this work and cleared up all of your shit. If you fully actualized and transcended yourself and became God.

             The god in you recognizes the god in others and recognizes that connection, the Good with a capital G. (ep: “What is Goodness.” )

            -So you are implicitly recognizing the beauty and majesty of reality at a metaphysical, spiritual level.  When that happens you’re in your Highest Self.  You feel that love for a little bit but then usually you fall out of it very quickly.

 

            -Imagine from now on if you lived your life with that kind of integrity.  If you start thinking about that it’ll bring tears to your eyes, the possibility of who you could be.

            -Start thinking about how you could impact people how you can lead people, how you could move people, connect and unite people.  This is how you develop the most powerful vision, the deepest meaning and sense of life purpose for your life.  This is what life is really about.

            -Integrity and truth have a power of its own that can cut through illusion (1:51:10).  That's why throughout history, rulers and politicians have always tried to control those who had high integrity.  Truth is the most dangerous thing to a devil and an ego.

 

            -Spiral Dynamics’ Stage Blue and Integrity.  Stage Blue stresses Integrity in such a puritanical, dogmatic way that it backfires (1:53:00).  True integrity requires a lot of consciousness work and it cannot be achieved ideologically, dogmatically or robotically, which are all features of stage blue.  They just tell you to follow some script, but a script is not consciousness.  They’ve been brainwashed with rules and “shoulds,” but they haven’t really mastered stage blue values, so a lot of them just fake it.  They need better methods and the open-mindedness to learn those methods.

            -If Stage Blue were totally openminded, non-dogmatic, inclusive, and grounded in mysticism and consciousness, it would be Stage Turquoise.

            -Stage Orange overly dismisses Integrity and morality as quaint religious fantasies and wishful thinking enforced by a “God in the clouds.”  But, they throw the baby out with the bathwater.

            -Higher stages of development release the straitjacket of the mind.  So, how do you release the straitjacket completely without becoming a monster?  When you fully become conscious there's no more fear. There’s only Love and Truth.

            -Integrity requires jailbreaking your mind and increasing your consciousness, so that you’re intrinsically motivated to do the right thing instead of just fearing punishment or guilt.

 

Traps with Developing Integrity:

        Integrity: it’s easy to preach, but hard to practice.

  Judgment

        Judgement is a low integrity activity (2:08:30). The Ego wants to declare itself righteous and others bad.  Genuine Integrity doesn’t judge others.  It recognizes how difficult it is to develop Integrity, so it’s compassionate for those with low integrity.

  Jealousy and Envy

        Envying people without integrity who are earning lots of money.

  Dogmatism

        Turning integrity into a dogma, algorithm, or rigid set of rules.

  Guilt. 

        Guilt backfires because it’s not coming from a genuine, intrinsically motivated place. It’s just some extrinsically enforced set of rules.  When you're truly loving and conscious, you don't need guilt to prevent you from being a monster.

 

Homework assignment: Contemplate the importance of Integrity in your life. How does having it or lacking it affect different areas of your life? (business, relationships, family, marriage, sex, etc)  Do you want to get on the path of developing integrity? (2:19:00)

            -You can’t get to Yellow or Turquoise until you spend a few years or even a decade mastering Blue, Orange and Green.  Spiral Dynamics Stages build on top of and integrate each other.  It’s about integrating and including each stage.  Not doing Orange or Green to the exclusion of Blue.

            -You need to do healthy Stage Blue.  You can develop work ethic, family values, honesty, discipline, character, honour, loyalty and responsibility without getting stuck in extremism.  Avoid all of that toxic, culture war, ideological, dogmatic, close-minded bs that you see in extremist, right-wing media.

            -Integrity equals Wholeness, Truth, Beauty, Love and God Consciousness.

Edited October 9, 2021 by FlyingLotus

[AleksM]

110. Optimism - How To Become Optimisitic Right Now

Definition: a hopeful outlook on the future. If you think your future is going to be better than today, then you’re going to be optimistic

Difference between optimism and pessimism is explanatory style. It’s the way you explain and the way you attach meaning to the things that are happening to you in your life.An optimistic person will get the same bad situation, he’ll get that same flat tire on the way to work, but he’ll assign a different explanation, a different meaning to it than a pessimistic person would.

3 explanatory styles:

1. Permanence: How permanent is the problem?Will the problem last forever? Pessimism - Permanent problem. Optimism - Impermanent problem.
2. Pervasiveness: “Will this undermine everything?” How pervasive is the problem? How much does it affect every category of your life? Optimism- other areas of life are unaffected. Pessimism - other areas are affected. 
3. Personalization: optimism - he takes credit for the good stuff and doesn't take personally the bad stuff. Pessimism - he takes bad stuff personally, he blames himself. He doesn't take credit for the good stuff.

There are tests out there that will assess you on the different levels of your explanatory style. Then you can actually do something to improve it.

Why is optimism important?

People who are more optimistic are more successful. They look forward to the future.

You're more persisent. It gives you an extra push.  You're able to stick with the process and bust through many more obstacles than a pessimistic person would. Sometimes that’s all it takes, just a little bit extra push, one extra obstacle you get through and then you get a new resurgence, like a second wind of motivation, and then that carries you throug

You're willing to try and do it all and still remain hopeful, happy, cheerful and confident.

Optimism is something you can learn. The optimistic person will get ten rejections and say “I got ten rejections, but this eleventh one, this eleventh call might be the one.”

How optimistic are you about your future? What do you think about your future right now? Are you hopeful for the next month? Are you excited about all the stuff that’s going to happen to you in the next six months? How about in the next year? How about in the next decade? Are you excited about the next decade of your life?

Exercise: write out and list 30 things that you’re most excited about achieving in the next year. (day, week, month, decade) - repeat this exercise when necessary.

Book - Mark Seligman - Learned Optimism

 

[AleksM]

116. Cause & Purpose - What Are You Willing To Die For?

 

• In the ancient times a solider was willing to go to battle and fight for something he believed in.
• What kind of mindset does it take to willing step onto a battlefield of thousands of brutal men and risk your life?
• Obviously he is scared, so what kind of drive must he have? 
• He has a cause, he has a mission he’s willing to bleed for.
• Consider the movie, 300
• The soldiers in 300 are fighting for their ideals beyond all odds.
• What are you fighting for?
• In the ancient times, life was a matter of life and death.
• What would a human being need to have to survive in that kind of environment, psychologically speaking?
• Purpose. That person would need something larger than himself to cope with all that chaos.
• That’s why religions took off like a wildfire in those times. Religion offered hope, a transcendent cause.
• You need to tap into those things that are important enough that you are willing to bleed and even die to make them manifest

Here are some suggestions for what you should start practically valuing right now:

• Beauty: go create something beautiful
• Truth: go work your ass off to discover what is really true
• Love: live your life with compassion and giving to others
• Justice: go create a more justice society
• Creativity: go add something profound to our culture

• Abraham Maslow talks about all these values and more in his brilliant book, Towards a Psychology of Being.
• You have to start living for something greater than sex, entertainment, stimulation, money, security, comfort, or peace of mind.
• The only way you’re going to radically change the trajectory of your life is by committing to something big.
• What it means for something be to be meaningful is that you are willing to bleed for it.
• Stop making useless shit the center of your life. Useless shit is okay, but make it the garnish of life, not the main dish.
• The main dish in life is your purpose.
• Purpose is larger than you, your family, or your friends. Purpose is about humanity.
• You purpose will be whatever you find advances humanity in the most meaningful way.
• find something that you’re willing to put the work into.
• Your ultimate joy in life can only come from the work you put into serving others.
• You have to put yourself on the hero’s journey.
• Are you on a hero’s journey now? No! You’re just sitting on your lazy ass, working a boring 9-5 job.
• It’s very easy to tell. Just ask yourself, “Is my job really advancing humanity in a meaningful way?”
• What did you bleed for this week?
• What is your cause? What are you willing to bleed for starting today?

Bottom Line: Pick a single higher value that your life will be about. Make sure it’s so meaningful that you are willing to bleed for it.

[AleksM]

Holism & Holistic thinking part 1

The two formulas:

holism = wholeness = health = healing = unity = oneness = the infinite = harmony and balance = goodness = love =  God =  selflessness = wisdom = beauty = holy = heaven = bliss

a lack of holism = division = fragmentation = partiality = brokenness = a lack of harmony and balance = limitation = the finite = selfishness = the ugly = evil = hell = suffering

[Loving Radiance]

343. All Criticism Is Untenable

9 hours ago, Girzo said:

Hmm, I have found this note in my OneNote and I think this episode haven't been included yet, someone might add it when updating the textbook later with more notes.

Quote

ALL CRITICISM IS UNTENABLE

Un-ten-a-ble (adj.)

"not able to be maintained or defended against attack or objection."

Synonyms: indefensible, unsustainable, weak, shaky

Judgement is a rejection of reality. Reality in front of you is the way it should be, because it's the only way. You have to become conscious of that.

Criticism can come from two places. Unconscious one and conscious one, where you know your criticism is untenable, defeats itself. It creates a kind of guilty pleasure, the thing is not to get addicted to it and not to take your own criticism seriously.

Criticism is a mechanism designed to maintain homeostasis. When you are criticising everyone and everything you are not looking inward, solving your deepest problems.

Criticising has almost always the exact opposite effect of what was assumed to achieve. It backfires. Wastes time and energy. You can't really be content with life if all you do is criticising. There are many other things that are worth doing instead, like raising your own consciousness for instead.

SIX QUESTIONS TO REFRAME CRITICISM:

1. How is this situation a red herring (distraction)?
2. What am I failing to accept here about reality?
3. Is this productive?
4. How can I be more constructive with my energy and time?
5. Is this making me feel happy (criticizing)?
6. What positive lesson can I learn from observing the thing I am criticizing?

30 DAY NO CRITICISM CHALLANGE: You wear a rubber band or something that will help you remember about your commitment. You stop being critical of anything for the next 30 days and being mindful of that. Every time you catch yourself getting into criticizing mode you ask yourself questions and drop the criticism.

Don't use insights into nature of judgement and criticism as a tool. They are not meant to be used against criticism. That would be criticising criticism, and eventually criticising criticism criticising criticism. Don't do that, instead, think about yourself and who you want to be. Do you want to tap in the mud, or get above it? It's your choice.

 

Edited April 23, 2021 by Loving Radiance
typos

[FlyingLotus]

Episode #440.  How To Forgive Anyone Who Hurt You - A Powerful Trauma Release Exercise

Summary is here.  It was reedited.

 

 

Edited October 9, 2021 by FlyingLotus

[TheDao]

Thnx!!

[Loving Radiance]

105. + 271. How To Be A Man

Part 1 – The Deep Core Of Being Masculine

1. 100% authentic
   1. Open about problems & insecurities instead of hiding them
   2. Being okay with offending someone by not being overly polite
   3. Self-expression & putting masculinity into the world
2. Emotional stability (being grounded)
   1. Stable values & principles and living by them (integrity)
   2. Non-reactivity, decisiveness and being secure in oneself by having a strong sense of identity (being mature & confident)
3. Being happy by oneself
   1. No need for external approval; creating value for oneself
   2. Values friends & girlfriends and being not dependent on them
4. Embodying own sexuality
   1. Normal & healthy part of life
   2. No shame or contraction/insecurity but self-love
   3. Openness about expressing one’s sexuality (expressing it for oneself)
      1. Giving one’s drive, essence, sexuality to the world (creating & giving your life-purpose to the world)

Practices

• Have lots of sex with lots of girls (having a wide range of experience)
• Strong career & sense of purpose
• Going out of comfort zone (into grow zone; having wide range of experiences)

 

Part 2 – Advanced Version

• Integrate your feminine
• Wanting to be the macho alpha man is not being the macho alpha man – being a man is rather being true to oneself which includes embracing one’s feminine side (can deviate from the culture image of being a man)
• Deconstructing the alpha “male” stereotype
  • Image: deep voice, big dick, filled with testosterone, extroverted, charismatic, big, tall, muscular, no emotions, assertive, charming, well dressed, liked by everybody, playboy who has swarms of girls around
  • That is a cultural norm and is not realistic
• Being oneself and not selling out to other people’s opinions is masculine
  • That includes having emotions
    • Judging oneself for not being an image of “masculinity” is insecure
    • Owning one’s emotions is secure
  • Let people love, hate or be indifferent to you
• Question cultural norms
• Turn around & face the fear of being in touch with your feminine
  • Admit, own, embrace and accentuate your feminine qualities
  • Courage is required for being this authentic
  • It’s transcending the poles masculine & feminine and being whole
• Counterintuitive technique: Accentuate your feminine qualities (emotionally difficult)
  • Be more emotional, be it the good and bad ones
  • Be nice, caring and compassionate
  • Be cute and like a little kid
  • Cry
  • Be nerdy
  • Be romantic
  • Express your feminine side in front of women
  • Do feminine activities
  • Be creative
  • Be artistic
  • Be soft
  • Be loyal
  • Speak with passion & emotion instead of indifference
  • Say what you want to say including the weak, pathetic and unattractive things
  • Have sex the way you want to
  • Love the way you want to
  • Fall in love
• Being emotional in front of people and staying secure & comfortable in oneself (without shame or embarrassment)
• Experiment with being hyperfeminine to see where your authenticity lies
• Not every woman has to like you being authentic – rejection still happens
  • There are still preferences on personality
• Dating advice
  • Neediness repulses women
  • Neediness comes from an inauthenticity (which is different for every needy man)
  • Short-term solution for neediness:
    • Owning one’s neediness with the woman (which risks her leaving or losing attraction)
      • Have a relationship with a woman, act needy, break apart and feel how neediness drove her away
      • Hiding one’s neediness lets one act like a little boy
      • Hiding it manifests it in other ways that make you needy
    • Try out faking it till you make it
  • Work towards authenticity
• Being a man is doing whatever you want, regardless if it is manly or girly
  • Bring you being the man (confident authenticity) in every area of life