Consilience

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Posts posted by Consilience

  4. Posted

    @aurum Technically Im still working through the details, Im also finishing Leo’s course. But as it stands, my ultimate vision is to have a stage yellow personal training/life coaching business. Right now the industry is pretty much locked in at stage orange, but the potential to use training, nutrition, and personal developement as a vehicle for understanding the self is there. It’s how I began my actualization journey and eventually stumbled upon spirituality. I have a pretty damn extensive knowledge of how to achieve fitness results, but see, that’s really only the beginning and the type of lessons one learns from fitness are immense IF you have the framework and perspective to learn.

    Id also make YouTube videos with a focus on training, nutrition and self with a yellow focus, and ideally work within my community locally, but as well as through the larger, global platform the internet provides, which is why YouTube would be advantageous. It also allows me a medium to express my ideas through speaking, which Ive found I really enjoy doing at the gym. Rattling off to clients about various facets of fitness gives me a lot of joy and tends to help others master their bodies.

    The joint PT business would most certainly be more geared at a stage orange level and while it still would impact and contribute towards people’s lives, I know I could provide a different type of value with what I just described above. 

  5. Posted

    Hello actualized.org folks,

    I was hoping to get some 2nd opinions of my current predicament. So right now I work as a personal trainer for a pretty standard corporate gym, and at the moment I am most certainly at a "slave wage" type of salary. Not only is my current position not long term financially viable, it also is not fully aligned with my life purpose. 

    So here's the thing... Recently one of the trainers and I realized we have a lot of potential together to start our own training business. She has various strengths and so do I; each of us compliments the other's weaknesses quite well. I'm actually fully confident that if we both worked hard enough and for long enough, we would be successful. Unfortunately though... This too is not my life purpose. 

    The advantage is that if I went off to start this 1st personal training business, in a matter of years my financial situation could drastically improve, my network within the community would grow, my experience level and skill sets would increase, BUT I would be essentially working towards a path which is not my ultimate goal/life purpose. Now this 1st business certainly has the potential to teach me various skills needed for my ultimate life purpose, but again, it's not my life purpose.

    So on one hand, it seems like a strategic move to start this one business, as it will give me the time, experience, money, and essentially life infrastructure to really bootstrap myself into my ultimate goal long term. On the other hand, part of me feels like I should just start working towards my life purpose right now, forgo the initial PT business and just do my own thing. The problem is it would be very difficult financially to pull it off. Without going into too much details on my health, I can't risk finical failure, as I am dependent on medications every month to live. SOOOO yeah I can't fuck up with money, which makes the 1st business plan a lot more appealing. 

    I see pros and cons to each path... But I also know life purpose work needs to be strategized for the long term, and right now I kind of need money so the idea of starting a joint training business seems very promising for the short term. However, I could also see it becoming difficult to start my own Life Purpose path down the road if I get too entangled in this 1st business. 

    In terms of what is the best strategy for life purpose... I don't know what I should do. Any insights or opinions would be extremely welcomed. 

  6. Posted

    Why? Because it increases your overall awareness, which is distinct from your concentration abilities. Both are intertwined and the exact nature kf their interaction is still unknown to me, but nonetheless both can be “trained,” so to speak. If increasing your awareness of both yourself and the world, plus lower stress levels and higher and more frequent states of fullfilment are something you’re interested in, meditate. 

     

    You convince the subconscious to meditate by meditating. 

     

    You see results by 1) sticking to a consistent meditation schedule all while being patient for results and 2) doing 60mins per day gives pretty robust and innediate results so id recommend thta volume. More if you have time but consistency is key here. 

  8. Posted

    Honest to god I have no idea why. After watching and reading as much as I have about spirituality, and intellectually understanding the metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology of why this consciousness work is not bs, Ive recognized how there really isnt a self at all, even when it feels like there is one.

    So why? Literally no idea. It just feels like Im letting some primordial force actualize as I continue to contemplate and meditate on this, all with the full recognition that non of it matters. And somehow it’s been an incredibly beautiful journey thus far, even in spite of the lows this work causes.

    The best answer I have is that Im just trying to BE myself in the most honest way possible, as well as follow this intrinsic curiosity towards finding what’s really true

     

  9. Posted

    On 11/30/2018 at 1:33 PM, Nahm said:

    Awesome! Great realization. Thought is illusionary, belief is identification with thought. So identity is illusionary. What is illusory could not live & die, so no ‘thing’ is a “life”, so life can’t be a test. I hope your days continue getting more and more belief, and care - free! Keep in mind, love, does not require a thought! Neither does awareness!

    Also, if you knew everything, there’d be no opportunity for belief. I’d look into that. Sounds suspicious. 

    And beliefs are more thoughts right? So boom! Strange loop >:o 

  11. Posted

    9 hours ago, phllip103 said:

    What are behaviors that you changed with awareness ?

     

     

    Emotional stability 

    More compassion

    Deeper insights

    Greater understanding of my own self structure

    More focus

    More discipline 

    More in touch with intuition 

    Probably more but increasing awareness has been an extremely powerful by-product of consistent 1 hour/day meditation. 10/10 would recommend :)

  12. Posted

    7 hours ago, Matt8800 said:

    @cammy It is a hard wired genetic predisposition. Introversion and extroversion both have their strengths and weaknesses. 

    Introversion can be evolved to confidence in social situations but they still drain energy as opposed to an extrovert who gets energy from social interactions.

    From a materialist paradigm this is the case. However it isn’t that black and white once you begin to expand your awareness. 

    Introversion can also be conceptualized as a belief - investigate why other people drain you, or why you’re shy? What in your direct experience of others makes you shy? Where is it stemming from really? You’ll eventually uncover that answer and can either let it go, or continue to hold it.

    In Ralston’s Pursuing Concsiousness bookc he goes into the dynamics of self traits (such as shyness) in more detail. The short answer is that all character traits like shyness boil down to serving the ego in some way shape or form BUT you can work towards letting go of these traits if you can trace their roots. 

     

  14. Posted · Edited by Consilience

    So this post inspired me to go back and reread the Book of Not Knowing's section on contemplation and then really try to practice his technique.

    I chose to focus my intent on discovering the truth about NOW. Interestingly enough, I did indeed have a mini enlightenment about the nature of NOW. At some point in, I think around the 40 min mark, it literally felt like my body was expanding outward and my mind had reached some sort of access concentration of no mind; it felt very mystical. And then I realized I was literally the NOW I was contemplating. Like the present moment is literally what I am... The subject of my question was actually just another way of asking "Who am I?"

    After that insight reached intellectual understanding (which happened really quickly) it kind of kicked back on my monkey mind and the mini mystical state ended. I remained super aware and just continued to contemplate for the remainder of the meditation.  

  17. Posted · Edited by Consilience

    Has anyone considered the possibility yhat all causality is an illusion. 

     

    For example, NOW is the only moment that exists, so how could something cause something else? Like seriously. Causality necessarily implies a past, but there is literally no such thing as the past, there is only right NOW.

     

    Moreover, this also means that randomness does not make much sense either. For example, randomness implies “could have been different.” But “could have been” implies past which we’re already established doesn’t make sense.

     

    In this light, causality, which is a necessary component of determinism, doesnt make much sense. But nor does randomness or probabilities. Using probabilities as a conceptual framework for QM works on paper, but does reality in and of itself operate off of probabilites? How could it if there is no past, no future and therefore no possible “could have beens.” 

     

    Anyways Im not entirely convinced of all this but just more food for thought. It’s not as simple as “no free will” or “free will” though, that’s for damn sure. 

  24. Posted

    4 minutes ago, Pouya said:

    Chasing is chasing and wanting is wanting for me. Those are content.

    Right. Those ARE just more “contents” within conscious awareness. Who is chasing exactly? What exactly are your ideas about materialism, or who you think you are? Do you know?

     

    Here’s the thing: All your ideas about materialism, all of your meaning about the world, all of your intellectualizations and learning, all of your social status and interactions with other people are meaningless contents within conscious. Let that sink in. Like REALLY sink in. Before any meaning can be given to an experience, the experience must first be experienced. But have you reflected on what meaing actually is? “Meaning” is itself just more contents within consciousness, and just as meaningless as the experiences themselves because meaning is literally another experience within your unified direct experience. Does that make sense?

     

    Furthermore, all of your ideas about self or the sense of a seperate self are still more meaningless contents within consciousness. All of your direct experience exists before “you” superimposed the ideas of a seperate self who is chasing and wanting deeper awareness. 

     

    Seriously explore your direct experience dawg: what do you see? If you look closesly, and in all 6 senses (taste, touch, sight, smell, hearing, mind), you’ll notice an unified field of phenomena popping in and out of consciousness. You’ll also notice that within each point of this field, there are an infinte number of ways to divide, distinguish, objectify, or create information about. In fact, all objects within consciousness,  are really just an arbitrary grouping of distinctions within the infinite field of distinctions already present, but again, none of it is seperate from the whole of conscious experience. Aka objects dont actually exist. All of your ideas, meaning, sense of self, materialism, or anything having to do with your mind, is fundamentally based on a false premise that objects exist as seperate entities in and of themselves, but as we just explored, no objects truly exist.

     

    So now we ask: who is chasing, who is wanting? What IS chasing, what IS wanting?

    ...

    Empty contents within consciousness that have arbitrarily been seperated from the whole of direct experience,  objectified mental ideas, which themselves are based fundamentally on a false notion, an illusion we might say.

     

    And here’s the thing, what Im talking about is an oversimplified fraction of all there is to say on this topic of non-dual spirituality. My advice? Keep contemplating, keep meditating and dont stop until you’ve unraveled all of this for yourself. 

     

    Id also recommend exploring Peter Ralston’s work. His books are extremely helpful for spirituality.