Leo Gura

Maybe. Or maybe it means Putin invades Moldova next. You don't really know Putin's aims. Nor does John Mearsheimer. Thinking that Putin will only take a chunk of Ukraine is foolish and naive. Putin will take as much as he can steal. I do generally agree that NATO has been expanded too much and should stop expansion. But you also have to understand, US foreign policy is not set by the President, it is set by the deep state, who will not allow Trump to surrender NATO to Putin. The CIA and DOD are not stupid like Trump, and they will not let Trump just do stupid things. Our CIA understands that Trump is a dangerous fucking clown. The CIA has smart people.

Nonduality is too simple because it is ultimately wrong. Nonduality is not God-Realization. Nonduality does not explain God. I have experienced God so deeply that you cannot fathom it. And what spiritual people talk about is not it.

He didn't train with the masters. He traveled all across Asia looking for masters and only found 1 guy who knew better than him. Ralston IS the master. He made it himself from scratch based on insane consciousness. Nothing in the martial world is based on insane consciousness. It's based on being a chimp. No one here understands what Ralston accomplished.

Not likely.

Don't equate higher consciousness necessarily with seeing more hidden stuff. It could be that, but doesn't have to.

I don't understand what you mean.

It only interconnects if YOU interconnect it in your mind. And that's the work of creating a life purpose.

I would speak less and look for ways to move out. Your speech is always limited by your location.

Trump would just appease Putin and get played by Putin because Putin is a genius and Trump is an ignorant clown.

That kind of doubt opens the door to bad trips.

That's because he didn't fully awaken. He got lost in astral travels and theory-building. I promise you, God is Infinity. Reality is Infinity. That's the final answer. Nothing less will do.

They can be, depending on how deeply you pursue them. But if you're just dabbling in those things then it won't be enough, it won't be very meaningful because it's such a weak, shallow, self-absorbed purpose. What is the point of all your reading of books? What will you do with it? Just sit there looking at your toilet? That's not inspiring. See, if you were reading books in order to help mankind colonize Mars, that would be deeply meaningful and inspiring.

According you, of course. Who else is there? Existence does not provide enough for everyone. All organisms must work to survive. 1) Simply being does not give you any reason to live or thrive. At least for most people. 2) Unless you are multi-millionaire, you must work to survive.

That's a very stupid argument. The truth is that Biden is much more of a threat to Putin than Trump. And bad diplomacy is what starts wars not ends them. Putin's desire to invade Ukraine had nothing to do with who was president. Putin has been grinding an axe against NATO for 20 years. The only thing Trump could have done is just given Putin everything Putin wanted or disban NATO. Which is not a wise move.

I would argue it's very ineffective to teach any kind of abstractions or principles without a slew of examples because your mind simply cannot grasp an abstraction out of thin air. The abstraction was originally derived from specific examples. How did Ralston develop his principles? By confronting real life examples and themln having abstract insights from them. This is why I shower you with examples. Because examples are empirical while the abstractions and generalizations are not. If you had the right collection of examples you could easily derive the principles yourself. Ralston's style of teaching is often not effective because it is too advanced.

Most people in Orange think like you. Which is why we have the problems we have. If you multiply your logic by 100 million other people, you see the problem with it. He's just not that powerful. A president has little control over such things. He would at the least need to get laws passed, which MAGA Republicans would block. Look at which party is most opposed to Wall Street and business regulation. What you are talking about is regulations on capitalism. The Biden admin has done a lot to crack down on and sue big monoplies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Ticketmaster. This would NEVER happen under Trump. Should Biden be doing more? Yes. But Trump will do nothing. And even make things worse by cutting what few regulations we have.

Not really. What changed was just knowing what to expect and relaxing into it.

He gets many things right in general. However he does not understand that consciousness is Infinity, so his models are ultimately not the highest understanding. Remember, consciousness is not a model and all your models will ultimately fall way short. Take what's good in his work but then go for God-Realization.

It's not at all clear how all this works.

Of course. Because your life has no meaning. You haven't created anything worth getting up for. When you find something meaningful to work towards you will leap out of bed. You will be unable to sleep. You will wake up 3hrs early excited to get to work.

Early on it was scary.

What you describe are the problems of excessive capitalism and wealth inequality. Trump is a corrupt toxic capitalist. So he will only make those problems worse. He has already promised all his major billionaire donors big tax cuts. So under Trump the rich will get richer at the expense of you and me. If you think Trump will save you from the evils of toxic stage Orange, you are beyond delusional. Trump is the epitome of the problem you want him to solve. He has zero capacity to solve that problem. Or really any problem. Because all he cares about is grabbing as much power for himself as possible and using it to enrich himself. If you cannot see that you are a fool and you deserve him to scam you. Trump's policies will easily lead to a big market crash, as W Bush did in 2008. That's how excessive Orange works. They run up the market until everything crashes and the rich walk away with the profits. The little guys, including all his MAGA supporters will end up screwed and worse off in the end. That is Trump's con. And it's obvious as day to anyone with a bit of wisdom. Trump will deregulate all the markets, allowing giant Wall Street monopolies, banks, and hedge funds to buy up more and more houses, push up prices, and extract ever higher rents until home ownship becomes impossible for anyone other than multi-millionaires. You don't care about anything other than money. And neither does Trump and his Wall Street friends. The only difference is, they will fuck you because they are large and you are tiny. So in the end they will steal your money. That is the whole Orange game.

I'd like to make a thread that shares and explores exotic cultures around the world, in the spirit of raising our openmindedness to and appreciation of the rich cultural diversity beyond standard vanilla Western culture. There are many great examples to be shared. Stuff like this: I want to see examples here of exotic and weird cultural norms and habits.

Do you not remember the Muslim ban? Trump's literal border idea was to dig a mote and stock it with crocodiles. Biden didn't start any wars. Biden is just reacting to stuff that would have arisen under Trump, and Trump would react to it even worse. All of Trump's policies are based in a profound ignorance of things work. Trump is fundamentally too ignorant to create effective solutions to any serious social problems.

Only because you want to.