tsuki

Guys want sex, so they include lots of sex into a top-tier man construct. Then, they proceed to judge women for having sex with the top-tier man instead of them. Isn't it ridiculous?

@Raw Nature I'm sorry, I didn't intend to offend you. I realized that the first part of my post was very arrogant so I deleted it, but not quickly enough. For the past few hundred years, humans are creating technology at exponential rate. I find no reason to doubt that solutions will be found once we collectively care to ask the right questions. The problem is, we don't care and it is not an issue of intelligence (in the common sense of the word). That is my opinion and I feel entitled to it. Have a good day.

Like I said, I'm not interested in debating you, just wanted to share an awesome piece of art. Treat it as a counter-example. When it comes to raising consciousness, I have never felt limited by technology, on the contrary. It's just a matter of asking the right questions. It's not a matter of competition. Highly conscious people will find a way to survive and create their content. Just look at this place. It's not for everybody and for a good reason.

I disagree with the intention to create a narrative that foresees the downfall of humanity. Technology is a tool to manipulate the world to suit our needs and it has both the creative and destructive potential. Your assessment of the destructive side is accurate, but it does not exhaust the topic. Your fear prevents you from seeing the bright side that brings equilibrium in your narrative. What we need is not intelligence (in the common sense of the word), but rather open hearts that will prevent us from destroying ourselves. No mind-centered solution can suffice, as the best a mind can do is create morality that is just another form of technology. The cohesive that keeps us from killing each other is empathy, the ability to feel each other's pain. Without it, we will exploit each other to no end. As for solution, I'm not even sure if there is a problem to begin with.

Not agreeing with all of your points, but wanted to share this piece of art that has been circulating the forum every now and then. Your post tells me that like you will enjoy it:

Just giving this gem another chance to be read. I wholeheartedly agree. The attitude towards Peterson that is enabled by administration of this forum is very unfortunate. I believe that this is the case.

That is yellow territory, it maintains orange pragmatism while tapping green creativity. When you go into yellow, you will be able to navigate the relationships with these people through your own experience at being these stages. The particular green idealist you're dealing with has an orange shadow. He skipped a stage because he couldn't handle it (for various legitimate reasons), so when you touch that area, he gets defensive. The shift out of orange into green happens because of awareness of orange's destructive excesses. When green heals itself, uncovers and embraces its layers, it transitions into yellow.

Trauma, by definition, is the emotional stimulus that the person is not equipped to process. Seeking relief by avoidance is the right way to deal with it in the short term, when you are supposed to deal with objective damage of the event and arrange your life in a safe way. The problem is that we're not taught the steps that follow, which enable the actual processing of the event in the safe space that has been created. If you don't consciously choose to heal and process the trauma, it will ferment until the patterns that the ego learned to cope with are no longer sufficient to distract you. Then, you turn malicious and self-destructive, out of desperation. I wholeheartedly disagree. There is no such thing as deliberate self-destruction. There is only lack of self-knowledge that leads to bad decision making. Ignorance, if not addressed, can turn into malicious desperation that seeks relief in destruction of others to justify itself, but it has to be reinforced through years of self-neglect. The ego is not evil. Evil does not exist. You cannot face the "trying circumstances" if the previous ones broke you and you haven't healed. Remember that children have much lower trauma threshold than adults. What causes PTSD in a soldier is very different from what causes it in a newborn. Bad parenting is enough to create a lot of trauma, not to mention the superstitions about newborns that circulate hospitals. Supposedly, until 1980 there was a superstition that newborns do not feel pain the same way as adults do, so some doctors performed invasive procedures without anesthesia. Horrifying. Other superstitions include the belief that if you address every whim of a newborn and answer every cry, then you are teaching it to be overly reliant in life. So, some parents decide to let the child cry until it has no more strength left. That in turn teaches the child that crying is useless and that help will not come. This causes a life-long pattern of suppression of emotions which forces the body to accumulate them. It causes feelings of estrangement and the belief that the world is a dog-eat-dog place. It gets reinforced by over-reliance on the mind and general cunning, manipulation, etc. Getting to the bottom of it requires the person to acknowledge a lot of hurt it had inflicted unto the world, which is more difficult with age. Psychology is very, very nonlinear and tricky. Actually, in the earliest stages of child development, addressing every whim of a child is absolutely necessary to develop a healthy ego. I suggest reading Homecoming by John Bradshaw for more information. Alternatively, look up Erik Erikson's model of psychosocial development.

@TheAvatarState Your definition of ego is very specific and highly non-conventional. You were programming that machine that runs your life ever since you were a child so that you could serve a role, purpose, in your environment. The problem does not lie in programming, or performing a role, but rather in the fact that you were not conscious of how the machine works. You did not even know that machine is there and you did not know that it will carry the patterns into your adult life. The patterns it learned were appropriate in the context of their creation, but they are self-destructive now because your environment changed. "The ego" as you call it, does not have a will of its own. It's just psychological momentum that repeats patterns that you taught it. That is lack of emotional maturity and lack of understanding of your emotional needs. Not the machine's fault. It's usually a result of bad parenting, trauma or emotional neglect. Addictions serve a specific role in addict's life. They are meant to distract the addict from emotional pain and fear. They are often rooted in traumatic experiences that were not dealt with properly. This is ignorance in programming, not the machine's fault. Notice that all of these are self-judgments oriented towards the past. You are judging others for judging others. The self is conceptual and this concept has nothing in reality to correspond with it.

Do you realize that if there is no free will, then the decision to live or not cannot be made? From the point of view of no free will, this question is meaningless. I think that you're trying to jump too far ahead in your reasoning. It is something akin to intuition, are you intuitive? When you want to make a decision, a choice is waiting for you, then intuition may present itself and speak to you. Even though it appears as something external, as if something was imposing a solution, you know that this solution is "special", "right" and "freeing". If you submit yourself to intuition, you feel free. This is what no free will looks like in enlightenment. If you have free will, then try to choose to align yourself with the world instead of trying to align it to your preferences. Surrender to the present moment, deliberately. Without sufficient purity of the mind and body, enlightenment experiences can be unstable. They feel overwhelming sometimes, but they feel right if you are ready for them.

My self-care routines are falling apart. I gained 4 kgs because of my "self-love" which manifested as allowing myself for sweet snacks after dinner. For the past few days I wanted to share the meals with my wife so I was cooking for both of us. I don't feel like doing that anymore. Our cooking stopped being independent and I wonder whether that's good or not. I don't know. From today on I will start counting calories and I'm setting my limit for 2300/day. I also returned to massaging my neck because it's gotten stiff lately. Thankfully, the shopping routine is still in order, but I'm running out of ideas for snacks during the day. Fruits are not satisfying and I'm not calorie-aware of other foods so they contribute to my weight gain.

Excellent post! Thank you!

On the symbolic level, Christ is the self. He is the embodiment of Logos, a man that subjects himself to the will of the Father without detachment from his humanity. The nature of Christ is dual. He is fully God and fully man. He is one with God, but he is also human through his purpose, which is to be the pathway to God for others. Through Christ, God embraces and elevates humanity. I think that viewing Christ through the lens of his death on the cross as a martyr should not be the main focus of worship. It is merely the testimony that she walked the talk and fulfilled the prophecies. It makes him legitimate as a Christian Messiah, but not necessarily a role model to follow. The crucifixion is also a symbol for ego transcendence. The five wounds relate to rejection of personal will (limbs), and acceptance of self-harm of others through defiance to God (heart). Crown of thorns symbolizes the double function of the mind: understanding and egotism.

Dr Nicole LePera is a psychologist informed in enlightenment. She has her own youtube channel linked above, as well as instagram community. I was introduced to her content by @DrewNows.

There is no such thing as no-thing. To ask "Why is there something rather than nothing" is similar to asking "Why is the Moon made of cheese rather can carrots?". Nothing is not a thing. Nothing cannot possibly be, that is what it "is". On the existential level, you can ask "why anything exists?" and the answer is God! How anything exists? The answer is: Love! What loves that something (everything)? The answer is Nothing! God is so selfless that it does not exist and it loves so hard that things do exist.

Aren't you having fun, @mandyjw? Nothing is not-a-thing. It isn't.

I was so guilty of this... I used to share these paradoxical quips (and still sometimes do) when I'm in a certain mental space of inner disconnection. I do that when I'm high on structural understanding, but very low on empathy. They are not deliberate attempts to "own the discussion", they point directly to the core of the problem with the intent to illuminate it. The problem with this "solution" is that it's irrelevant. It's like giving a person a ladder that has only the first and the last step and none in between. We're relative creatures, we don't work this way. It's all contextual and we first and foremost want to be felt, not understood. So, here's a quip for this discussion: Meet the relative as the relative. Boom, thread closed. (Just kidding).

"Better" and "worse" are relative to your agenda. "Final" awakening is when there is no agenda because there is no self. From the POV of enlightenment, there is nothing better and there is nothing worse.

I'm a big fan of self-studying but it has its limitations. There are reasons to have a teacher apart from being disciplined by someone. Studying all by yourself has the disadvantage that you don't know how well you will be able to apply the studied knowledge practically. Even if you practice by yourself, you do not know what society expects from you and therefore don't know the market value of your skills. Other than that if you study by yourself, you introduce your own bias into the studies you do. If you study in a group, you can triangulate each others blindspots and self-biases with multiple perspectives.

"All teachings are relative" and they are relative from two "ends", so to speak. Not only they are relative to the teacher, they are also relative to the student. Even if you had many deep mystical experiences, they may not mean a thing to a regular person. Not just because a regular person is a devil, etc, but because different things speak to different people. Is there an objective criterion of teachings that would allow us to sort them into absolute hierarchy? I wonder what would postmodernists say. I understand that, but then again - maybe the fact that he aims for a big audience is the trade-off he has to make? The symbols he has to use must be much more widely recognizable so the quality of his transmission would obviously decrease. Not saying that he makes this choice deliberately - he may be a victim of his success. That would make him a tragic character, now wouldn't it? If he were conscious of it, it would make him a martyr, a bodhisattva . Is it really better to have a few, select, fully enlightened individuals than a mob of intellectuals ripe with knowledge, just waiting for their proper mystical experience? I just can't understand why you're behaving as if it was a contest between you and him. He's like a fertilizer for your flowers. And you fight devils as if they had existence apart from the energy you give them when you fight. Leo, I don't want to be cheeky or anything, but God has no opposites. Ego is a part of the design, that is the enlightenment of psychology.

You mean, like, zero? Not a single peak of all the enlightenment mountains? Maybe there is an enlightenment peak that is accessed through psychology? Yes, I agree. But don't you do that as well? All teachings are partial and lead straight to hell because if they aim at any audience, then they are based on objective meaning. If you don't admit the possibility that some hells are less contracted than others, then what is the point of teaching at all? I think that given how large Peterson's audience is, the hell he's leading into is not all that bad. The problem is that the solution that is proposed does not work in modern day society. It never had, It is aimed at select few individuals that are predisposed to this path. It's extremely masculine. Enlightenment has always been in short supply, just like Peterson claims. ___________________________ PS. I do understand why you're calling people devils, but as a technical term - demons would be more appropriate. Demons demonize, but devils? Hmmm...

For reference: to Peterson, evil is not just selfishness that stems from finitude. The tension within the human condition is brought upon because of polarity between finite and infinite s/he experiences. This is the cause of suffering in life and it has no obvious payoff. He sees two ways to address this problem other than suicide - one is by embracing meaning through conquering fear and the other is nihilism. Peterson thinks that when people choose nihilism, they basically rot with resentment and evil is the outward expression of that. It is the deliberate destruction of happiness of other people. Relatively speaking, in terms of human psychology, I think that he is right. Contrary to popular opinion here, I think that he actually does understand postmodernism, but he falls into believing that it is somehow universally evil. It is only evil in his own definition of evil, as it guides people into destroying meaning while giving no alternative. To him, this makes nihilism the only way of addressing suffering and since as a psychiatrist he's been treating people for that - it's no wonder that he hates postmodernists. I think that despite his multi-perspectival (yellow) thinking, he does not appreciate the importance of stages of development. I believe that he is spiral-aware as he brought up Piaget on multiple occasions, but he fails to see that postmodernism is needed at later stages of development. Given how much effort he's put into battling it, I don't think that it's likely that he will ever embrace it. I remember hearing this quote and I'm not sure, but I think that it comes from this video: In terms of human psychology, exploring the "humans infinite capacity for evil" is nothing else than shadow work. It was always clear to me that Peterson is not against enlightenment - on the contrary - he advocates FOR life that guides towards it. The tension point between Leo and Peterson's teaching is the goal they are aiming for. Leo does not respect the relative domain and goes full god-mode, masculine style.

Hey @Leo Gura. In the beginning of your blog post video, you mention the historical texts about Jesus. Were you talking about the Gospels, or did you read any external texts? If you have the titles handy, I would appreciate if you shared them.

Yesterday I had a deep prayer/meditation session that exploded into a surge of creativity. Since yesterday, I'm starting to feel weird tension around my jaw when I keep breathing/praying deeply throughout the day. When it starts bothering me, I notice that I would very much like to have it relaxed, open. It's very easy to notice the performance of my mind throughout the day thanks to this prayer. When I'm tired or focused externally, the words become smeared, like coming out of a low quality speaker. They also require conscious attention to maintain.

It's not just that replacing sex with masturbation to porn is unhealthy for a relationship. My point was that any contact with porn has negative consequences, regardless of whether you have sex with your partner, or not. Pornstars have a certain way of presenting themselves: looks, behavior, submissiveness, etc that are engineered to cater to the widest audience possible. By jacking off to them, you are training your brain with a very powerful stimulant to expect such behavior from women during sex. Of course, it should be said that if your partner accepts that and finds this behavior enjoyable, then it is absolutely fine. On the other hand, I would speculate that pornstars are not typical women and they mostly value money and derive self-worth from their attractiveness. By framing your partner into exhibiting their behavior, I wouldn't be surprised if you were damaging her self-esteem unintentionally.