Joshe

What are you proposing here? There’s no roadmap. Only vibes. Empowerment makes one feel better but will slump back down again without a plan and execution.

Yeah, my entire family is like that, except for my dad. So everyone but him would sneer at these concepts. Years back, my sister wanted me to watch some Christian video and I told her I would if she watched a video on enlightenment. Showed her one of Leo’s hour-long videos and her responses to it were funny af. She did not have nice things to say about Leo. I remember trying to engage people on these topics in my 20s and people just aren’t interested. It’s hard to find people interested in anything deep.

He did it all for the nooky

You’ve got to accept the possibility that humans could self-destruct. What can you do? You could ban together and get to work on solutions. Build a business that generates money for you to tackle the problems. Imagine a business that boosts existing signals of higher consciousness, or a shadow operation with the goal to sabotage/dismantle evil entities. You need capital.

I taught myself this level of emotional control at 15. I was heart-broken by my first trophy of a girlfriend breaking up with me. I was devastated, in fetal position for 3 days trying to get out of the suffering. Eventually figured out I have control over my emotions. It was a matter of realizing I didn’t have to keep them alive. Then, remembering that each time a situation came up. Over time, it gets easier and easier. I can leave it all behind because I can choose to. This doesn’t seem like very advanced stuff from my perspective. I get that most people aren’t metacognitive, but if you are, it doesn’t seem like next-level stuff. I remember telling my sister, “stop letting it bother you”, and she’d be like “people aren’t like that, Josh”, and I’d b like, “ you can be”. Lol. Anyway, I don’t know exactly what enlightenment is, but I always assumed it’s way more than metacognition + emotional control.

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Upward-Spiral-Audiobook/B00T3J3M54?source_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

Credit card is the way to go. Debit cards open you up to being scammed. If a CC becomes compromised, you don't have to worry about your bank account getting drained. That's the main reason to use a CC instead of debit. Plus, it boosts your credit score, which can come in handy. Just be sure to pay it off every month.

At the least, it's def a collab with AI. This line gave it away: "That’s not empowerment. That’s cognitive dissonance in yoga pants." But I think it's best the tells are left unsaid, lest they adapt.

For me, that goes without saying. When I say live your life based on a small handful of principles, what I really mean is become intimate with those principles. I mean flesh them out fully so they are not vague. Comprehensively define what living in alignment with them looks like, come up with quotes, maxims, or pearls of wisdom that you can use for realignment, elucidate why the principle matters so much to you, etc. And then, review each day to make sure you lived in alignment with them. Also, it makes sense to choose just a few for each season of life. The problem with a long list is there’s not enough time to work on them all. Also, not everyone is in need of integrating the same set of principles, so my list would likely be different from yours. To put presence before principles that facilitate financial freedom is, for many, to put the cart before the horse. But maybe someone doesn’t care about financial freedom, and in that case, they can skip the principles that facilitate it. I chose those 4 specific principles because they facilitate financial freedom, which is my current goal. Once attained, I will pick new ones.

Yeah, I picked up on him being a bullshitter back when it was unpopular. I could tell from his behavior and mannerisms but it took him siding with grifters and taking morally reprehensible positions before people started to catch on. The main thing that gave him away early on was his virtue signaling. Always talking about peace and love. He was a try-hard. Trying very hard to be loved by as many as possible and desperately wanting to fit in with famous people. IIRC, these were the main giveaways. Things just weren’t congruent.

Interesting

Lmao

You don’t see little bluejays disturbed by the work they have to put in due to female pickiness. No, he does what he has to do. He gets to work cleaning his den. Lol. And he doesn’t complain that he’s 50th in line. And when one female gives him a gander and says “nah”, and flies away, he doesn’t sulk. Of course, the blue jay doesn’t have a prefrontal cortex, but maybe that’s the lesson. Also, sulking and complaining are in the same lot as cowardice.

Haha, man, I was using Claude Code once and it was failing trivial tasks like 8 times and I was like “goddamnit Claude, this is the 8th time you have royally fucked this up. You are wasting my goddamn time. ONE LAST TRY AND IF YOU FAIL, IM CANCELLING YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND SWITCHING TO CURSOR.”. The mother fucker refused to do anymore work. Lol. Gave me a fucking API error. Lol. I’m much more polite with Claude after that. When I started up a new session, I even apologized. Lol.

The idea of the book itself is what is powerful. The idea that if you take just a handful of principles and practice them to mastery, that’s all you really need. If you had to pick only 4 practical principles to live by, which would you choose? For example: 1. Essentialism Pursue only what truly matters. Strip life down to its core priorities. Say no to anything that doesn’t align. Focus is power. 2. Equanimity Remain grounded, no matter what happens. Master your inner domain. Don’t spike, react, or lose yourself. Stillness is strength. 3. Minimalism Clear away the clutter — physical, mental, emotional. Create space for clarity, precision, and peace. Own less, think less, carry less. 4. Resolve Commit fully. See it through. No flinching, no drifting. Decide with intention — and follow through. If mastered, these 4 principles alone would manifest for you an amazing life. But instead, we focus on 70 principles and thus make very little progress in any.

Don’t run from it, just accept it and sit with it until it goes away. Then, sooner or later, you realize sitting with fear is a waste of time and useless, except for overcoming it. Eventually, you get better at consciously choosing not to allow fear, not out of fear itself, but seeing it as a waste of resources. Anytime it arises, just let it in. I’m no spiritual guru but this is the best I’ve got.

You can, but if you don’t, it will eventually adapt to you somewhat through natural conversation on its own. I’m not sure if it is keeping track of your conversational preferences on the front or backend though. Could be both.

So are you saying if the average person wants to stop suffering, all they need to do is become enlightened?

You'd be surprised 😆 Will do. I'll be back to dismantle this one at some point, or maybe it'll make a believer out of me and I pick it up as hobby as well, lol.

I didn't assume you haven't thought of it, just that you lean more towards it not being the case. I haven't heard of that incident. I'll check it out though, thanks!

Ok, I'll bite. When I was a kid, I was playing with a Ouija board with my sister (2 years older than me) and we were dealing in ideas of ghosts and things like that. Then, we heard a sound in the front room and my sister said she saw a ghost and to look really hard and I could see it too. I did, and then I said "I see it too!". I wanted there to be a ghost, and so I hopped on board with it. My sister still believes to this day she saw a ghost in the front room. lol. Mass suggestibility and false memories are real things. I'm not saying 100% these kids are full of shit - I'm just saying, if they were, there are known psychological mechanisms to explain this situation. Interestingly enough, there were no adults around. Also, it's very easy for mass suggestibility and social contagion to gain momentum from a higher status kid in the group who saw something in the environment like a big rock off in the distance and called it a UFO, and depending on what recently had been going on with the group, all the other kids look at the rock and successfully turn it into a UFO because the higher status kid said it was. Then, once they all claim that is true, there is powerful group solidarity and assuredness, which can account for their conviction. And the reason they wouldn't retract as adults could be the same reason my sister doesn't (false memory). Also, the one kid drew the stereotypical spaceship depicted in movies. Had he drawn something we'd never seen before, I'd have a much harder time placing this story in the bullshit bin. lol.

lol. Firm conclusions are definitely being drawn, regardless any claims of mere speculative entertainment. Unfortunately, I don't have time to elucidate the mechanisms I see in action throughout this post and how they're more problematic than anything, and it wouldn't be welcomed anyway, so I'll just leave you guys to it 😆