Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights
Miscellaneous bits of wisdom and resources on personal development, life purpose, philosophy, epistemology, nonduality, psychedelics, etc. Published randomly throughout the week.
- penetrating mental vision or discernment.
- the sudden act of grasping the inner nature or truth of a situation.
- a deep understanding of a person or thing.
Insights here are meant to be quick and half-baked. Consider these food for thought.
I've deliberately disabled comments to keep the blog streamlined. If you want to discuss any of the blog posts, you can do so here: Actualized.org Forum
Tim Snyder has a great view of our political situation:
Although, I must add a warning. Snyder does not really understand what freedom is in an existential sense. The entire point of government is that humans do not and cannot like freedom. Freedom is not good for you. Freedom is bad for you. This fetishization of freedom comes from a misunderstanding of what freedom is on an existential level, and when you get freedom so wrong you will end up living under a corrupt and unjust government.
But Snyder's perspective is still good to consider. Not every perspective needs to be existential.
Rich and powerful people often do not have an ideology or a consistent set of beliefs. Their ideology is pragmatism and opportunism. They will believe and say whatever they need to in the moment in order to get more wealth and power. This is vital to keep in mind when trying to understand and predict their behavior.
Acquiring and wielding enormous power and wealth is virtually impossible without constantly lying, both to others and yourself. Rich and powerful people lie so fluently and constantly that it doesn't even register in their minds, it's just the only way they know how to live. Their entire lifestyle and mental structure is oriented around it. So there actually is an important psychological difference between ordinary people and megalomaniacs. Megalomaniacs do not think like you or me. They have sold their souls to the devil for power, wealth, and status. This is a fundamental decision they made early in life and never looked back. Truth and integrity does not exist for them, even though of course they tell themselves otherwise. But it is crucial that you understand that rich and powerful people are literally incapable of doing the Actualized work because their life would implode. I want you to really understand and appreciate the cost of the Actualized work, and why it is so rarely done. You have to give up aspirations for serious power, wealth, fame, and sex in the name of truth. Very, very few people will do that because they do not comprehend the value of truth while the value of those others things is obvious.
Truth is antithetical to power. Contemplate why.
Note: Of course, do not make the silly mistake of thinking that poor and lower class people are champions of truth. No, no, no. Lower class people also have a shocking disregard for truth, but for other reasons, usually reasons of ignorance and low intelligence. Lower class people are usually more honest and authentic than the powerful, but they are still profoundly ignorant. One can be a very authentic and honest ignoramus. This is why populism is a canard. On the other hand, the powerful are more cunning, conniving, and manipulative.
So who cares about truth then?, you might ask. Basically, no one. But there are degrees of selling your soul to the devil and you should distinguish between them.
Wolfram has one of the best understandings of how reality works, for a scientist. But I must stress, for a scientist.
This is about as profound as science gets:
As great as Wolfram is, I still hesitate sharing this with you because Wolfram's model is not at all the correct explanation of reality, and I don't want you to get mislead by the entire paradigm science. It is good — for science — but it is nowhere good enough from the point of view of our work. There is only so much understanding that the paradigm of science allows, so relative to that, Wolfram's work is profound. Enjoy his explanations, glean whatever insights you can, but do not start to take it as literally true. You will awaken far beyond such scientific reductions. God is way beyond all that. Consciousness is not reducible to computation. Reality is not finite/discrete. You can subdivide space (consciousness) forever.
With all those caveats in mind you can still appreciate Wolfram's work. And you will go beyond it.
The recent Life Purpose Course video outage is now fixed.
Sorry for the delay.
Have you ever wondered what happens to all your waste?
It's more fascinating than it sounds.
This man threw away his hard drive into a landfill with 8,000 bitcoins on it. Now worth $800 million.
A beautiful depiction of Infinity:
That's what God/Consciousness/Mind is like in its purest form.
Try to imagine that each white dot is its own Infinity, which you could zoom into forever. This gives you a sense of an infinity of Infinities. An infinity of Gods. Each white dot is a God unto itself, absolutely sovereign, holographically containing all the other dots. Indra's Net.
Note: Don't take this too literally. Infinity can look many different ways.
Credit: Lemat Works