My Quest for Truth and Self Mastery

[bmcnicho]

Introduction:

A few hours ago, I watched Leo's video, "What is Reality - A Radical Explanation".  He was definitely correct in proclaiming it his highest teaching!  The video inspired me to take this work more seriously, so I'm creating this journal to hold myself accountable and to create a record of my progress to look back on.

I think I'll start with a brief summary of my life story.  I was diagnosed with autism when I was 3 years old.  At the time I was nonverbal and it was predicted that I would be institutionalized by the age of 8.  After extensive speech therapy, however, I was able to learn to talk before entering school. Even so, I still had severe anger problems, practicaly zero social skills, and refused to participate in most school activities. 

I was put on an IEP to help me deal with these issues, but for the first couple years I viewed the therapy as being forced on me and essentially hated the world.  When I had started to make some progress, however, I recognized my limitations and the goals of the therapy became my own.  

By the time I entered middle school, I had essentially succeeded and created a whole identity around being "normal".  I felt like I had to act in very specific acceptable ways and was always afraid of slipping up and exposing that I was different.  Around the same time, I came up with a life purpose of becoming a neuroscientist.  I naturally craved truth, since my persona was so inauthentic, but at the time I viewed science as the only valid source of truth.

The next 5 years went very well for me, and I was very psychologically stable, but as a result I didn't experience a whole lot of growth.  I had my first girlfriend my senior year of high school, and at first it was going really well.  I began to accept myself more and became more open and compassionate.  I even had a strange experience once that I would describe as vaguely transpersonal.  But then the relationship ended suddenly and somewhat inexplicably and my view of the world started to become much darker.

In April of 2016, near the end of my first year of college, I gave up on becoming a neuroscientist.  At the time, it was because I was frustrated with the structure of the university system and thought getting a PhD would take too long.  I took some time off from school to reflect on things, and that shifted me from spiral dynamics stage orange towards stage green.  (I also tried psychedelics for the first time, 1 gram of mushrooms, very mild trip) 

I discovered actualized.org on YouTube in November of 2016, and went back to school in January 2017.  I didn't have a strong purpose for going back though, so unfortunately I slacked off a lot.  However, that did give me lots of time to binge watch Leo's videos and do lots of contemplation.  I also started following Jordan Peterson around that time and the two of them together helped rekindle my desire for truth.

I realized, however, that the truth I was looking for couldn't be found at a university, so I dropped out of school in October 2017.  After that, I tried a couple different jobs that didn't work out and I've been working for my dad for a few months now.  Since I left school, I've read dozens of books, done extensive contemplation, and have continued to watch Leo every week.  I'd now say I'm solidly at stage yellow, and hope to move toward turquoise over the next few years.

Now with that out of the way, stay tuned for my continuing quest to master my psychology and discover ultimate truth...

Edited July 2, 2019 by bmcnicho

[bmcnicho]

Day 1: Too Much Theory

I started off the day by watching an online lecture on Hegel by the cognitive scientist John Vervaeke.  It's part of a lecture series called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.  He's been going over the history of western philosophy interspersed with cognitive theories to explain why modern culture is experiencing an increasing sense of meaninglessness.  It's a great series that I would highly recommend.

Hegel's works are incredibly complex, and the lecture was only an hour long, but I was introduced to some of his key ideas.  I want to study his historical ideas a lot more in the future, but what I found most valuable from this lecture was his dialectical method of thesis - antithesis - synthesis.  This sounds similar to Carl Jung's idea of unifying the opposites.  From what I know so far, it sounds like Hegel might have had some awareness of non-dualism, even if it was mostly on a conceptual level.

Next, I watched the final installment of an analysis of Carl Jung's Aion by the YouTube channel Uberboyo.  This video summarized what they had discussed previously and offered some conclusions.  Aion is a fascinating book that is essentially a psychological interpretation God heavily influenced by Gnosticism. They also discussed the psychological implications of artificial intelligence and speculated on what would fill the gap left by the decline if Christianity.

I then went on a run for a little over an hour.  It had been awhile since I had ran that far, so I was definitely feeling out of shape.  I spent some time on the forum when I got back and was really starting to feel overloaded with theory after already watching two lectures.

I spent some time contemplating whether all these ideas were actually improving my life, or if I was just getting caught up in them because they sounded interesting.  I reflected on how I might be using even high quality information as a distraction by not taking the time to integrate the information.  I concluded that a surge of motivation caused me to cram too much theory into one day.

I had dinner and then unfortunately got sucked down a YouTube rabit hole of random vlog videos.  The videos were pretty low consciousness, however, there was a positive human element to them.  They made me remember people I knew from years ago and caused me to reflect on my attitude towards other people in general.  It was a nice contrast to the abstract theorizing.

You can probably tell by now that I have somewhat of an internet addiction, but as long as I still have it I might as well try to get something positive out of it.  I'll try to gradually cut down on my internet use over the next few months.

Edited July 3, 2019 by bmcnicho

[bmcnicho]

Day 2: Routines Thrown Off

First, I slept in until almost noon. (I normally try to wake up between 9 and 10)  Before waking, I had a series of semi-lucid dreams interspersed with periods of being half awake.  The dreams were of normal, realistic scenarios, so it messed with my sense of reality a bit.  

I watched a Q&A from John Vervaeke.  The part I found most valuable was when he answered a question about how to go about cultivating wisdom in the modern world.  He described how the institutions and traditions that used to be focused on wisdom esentially no longer exist.  This creates the problem of people becoming autodidactic.  He proposed that various teachers should network together, but it would have to be somewhat hierarchical so that people could distinguish the highest quality teachings.

I then slacked off for awhile before going to work.  The schedule was completely different today than normal, which really threw me off.  I suppose days like this will happen sometimes, maybe there's some value in the chaos.

Edited July 4, 2019 by bmcnicho