Edelweiss

I would not call him a spiritual teacher. I am having gripes about him as he is making unsubstantiated claims in vast quantities, I have read a number of his books. Let me call him a researcher who draws some rather "interesting" or let me put it this way, fairly unscientific conclusions. But again, what do we humans know about truth anyway...

What is "Something" then? Lies? U have a point... Truth = The way things are, whether human-comprehensible or not, assuming that there are "things" and that they "are". I think for general purposes of human understanding that definition is tough enough to grasp. Indeed without truth all we have is illusion and delusion and so it is. To what degree reflects your state of humanness and mental health. We have no fkn clue what the truth is - ever! That's why we are arguing 24/7 on clown world. It's for entertainment only...

Maybe I shouldn't run him down too much, he has something valuable to say at times. But I think the main aim is for you to become one of his groupies and spend lots of your money on his seminars. You got to develop a sensitive BS detector in these circles...

Yes, I have read the chapter, let's put it this way, he may claim to be a neuroscientist, I think he is a chiropractor by trade. He'd got a lot of interests but he mixes just about everything that "makes sense to him." Pure ephemeral fluff and unsubstantiated claims, particularly this book is hard one to swallow...

I read tons of claims regards the PG and it appears to be like some Internet Mis/Disinformation thing that has taken on a life of its own as these claims just seem to be mindlessly repeated. I begin to suspect that this may be some gigantic time waster psyop lke flat earth etc. E.g. : PG is centre of spirituality and enlightenment, PG is deactivated, can be activated, is contaminated or calicified, flouridated, u can do silly exercises and take expensive cocktails to activate it, it has and uses piezoelectic crystals that make it function, etc and so forth, spread by personalities such as Scott Jeffeys and of course Joe Dispenza, IMO a con artist of pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo. I would like to know if someone can point to concrete EVIDENCE (not again BS claims or subjective trip experiences) that there is such thing as PG activation, with concrete before/after comparisons perhaps even by applying some of the highly questionable "techniques" that are being mentioned. (That would also imply that the PG has been previously inactive - I cannot imagine any gland in the body that has been fully deactivated while still remaining in some kind of living condition.) So far I have not seen one shred of credible evidence that these claims are actually true and this appears being hyped as the shortcut to enlightenment or general requirement for personal development or simply to sell miracle supplements.

Never before in the history of jobs was humanity presented with this dilemma. In order to survive in today's world we need to bring in some cash because we are not self sufficient anymore but totally dependent. First on Mum and Pop, then generally the government or a corporation in other words we are addicted to money to sustain our lives. (This is by intention). So kids are herded into the school system (concentration camps) to produce good little dependent, order-taking, non-thinking worker drones who will labour diligently as wage slaves, doing their JOB (Just Over Broke – as Kiyosaki so eloquently put it). Because our parents did the same we likely followed their trusted advice and are now stuck in one as well. The job trap. It has been passed down like some religious belief, almost unquestioned. So how is it going for you? Depending on when our suffering starts while on the job we might or might not awake in time realising that this really sucks the life and soul out of us. (My experience in large corporations is that probably only about 3-5 % really enjoy their jobs, and some of them might even be psychopaths. Check the sarcasm memes for a good laugh.) Awaken a bit and you realise that today there is an unbelievable choice of alternatives and advice what you could possibly do instead. Fact or fiction? If true, wage slaves like most of us are not prepared for freedom, we're indoctrinated and deeply in the rat race living paycheck to paycheck to even consider an alternative. That choice makes us suffer even more: The dislike of our daily drudge is compounded with the internet showing countless pretty pictures of successful people lounging with laptops on the beach and "you can do it too" seminars and newsletters books with catchy titles like "The 4 h work week". Simply – jobs we don't enjoy (that is basically nearly all of them) will make us ill, psychologically first, then slowly and progressively physically. Also the requirements just to hold a job are increasing rapidly. The last juice is being squeezed out of employees these days: I notice that lunchtimes, once holy, are disappearing. Meetings are held anytime, lunch is proudly ignored, efficiency is pretended, people are desking when they eat or skip it altogether. People report for meetings at 6 am unquestioned. One is required to always be available to the boss. Staying late again? Sorry to the wife and kids, again. Early start tomorrow? Yes, sir. Weekends, of course. Oversees tomorrow, naturally. Retirement is becoming an outdated concept and after you're 50 you will essentially be ready for the scrap heap as nobody will employ your outdated shell of a soul, and by then the benefit pool is empty and your retirement savings are worthless. The culmination of that is in the Japanese salary-man who is sacrificing his enire life for the corporation. Your death at the keyboard is the ultimate aim of your corporation and your government. Don't forget you are their asset and then of no more value to them. I would even suggest that the Job is the biggest killer of mankind (genocidal), giving us a cocktail intestinal disease, mental disease (stress, fatigue, depression, addictions etc.), heart disease, obesity, occupational diseases and more – eventually pre-mature death. My dad died from it, I've done over 20 years and am affected by the fallout, too. It's essentially the biggest killer of "civilised" humans ever. And general dependency is on the increase. But when you study alternatives it is almost impossible to switch and command an equivalent salary amount in another way without years of dedication and bridging loans. Not GRQ! It also appears by design that now only corporations are able to pay a wage that allows our survival. High specialisation of the better educated forces onto them very narrow choices requiring relocation of you and family, often internationally. Also jobs are disappearing. The consequences of no job are equally miserable – being totally dependent on handouts. I believe the era of plentiful jobs is now ending. We need to prepare for a new time. With coporations aiming to hire less and less people and or replace them with robots and software there will be a revival of almost medieval style small craftsmen and specialists as already seen on contracting websites. Fierce competition will bring down wages – allowing a good living? The majority will be left on the sides looking for scraps. I proclaim jobs are an obsolete concept for our time and the future. But then what will take its place? Universal basic income -yeah, right! There is an agenda here: Total global debt saturation, creating: Bondage and dependence on government or corporation (the same, really) thus eliminating choices Mind numbing distraction/entertainment Reduction of the herd to purely productive serfs Assimilation into some communist utopia (UN) Discussion: Have you, too, fallen for the job trap? Are you feeling conned or victimised? Are you addicted to your salary fix? Is your job sucking your soul? Are you ill from it? Can there be a prosperous future without traditional jobs or communism? Without the intervention from some government body? Are you prepared for the future? What alternatives to a job (or occupation in exchange for money/currency) do you see for yourself or your children? Do you teach your children an alternative concept to having a job when they grow up? Do you believe concepts like Ikigai have practical merit for a change?

Now this is perhaps some elementary question in the PD community and the more I read Actualized the more I get the feeling that nothing really matters I think I may not be very evolved yet but all I know from my own experience, is that for most people and myself included, having a purpose or a meaning in what one does or in ones life is very important to mental well being. And that has been proven all over. (e.g. Logotherapy or the general mass delusion of following what you are told and the long term consequences of that shit). Being myself in this quagmire of enduring a meaningless but reasonably paying job that now also violates some of my principles and which is almost impossibly to give up without committing some kind of family-suicide, it becomes evident that it is just not healthy to carry on this way. I can accept what is happening all day long and go along with it but this either a subconscious problem or something more. And it will come back to bite you. Misery, illnesses, regrets... Now technically one could imagine that your purpose and the meaning that you associates to activities is a pure construction of the ego in order to boast one's self importance and do-gooding in the world and feel good about it. Might as well leave your marble bust behind... But now we come to the spiritual side of it, are we all endowed with a purpose or alternatively is the activity we feel to be meaningful something that was given to us as an individual somehow? After distilling the meaning conundrum down to its basics one almost always comes to the point where service to the community or to humanity will be regarded almost universally as a”meaningful” pursuit. I can feel it... most of you will. If I do stuff for others and it helps it feels good. If I am selfish with my family it feels ok for a minute but not in the long term Now isn't that interesting? It appears that there is more behind that, the selflessness – meaning connections is somewhat intriguing. What I also feel curious about (a parallel form the meaning issue) is our so very diversified interests. I see it with my children who had very different interests. From the time they could speak they knew what they liked. Same for me, I liked planes and radios and some technical stuff. Until this very day I do not know why it attracts my curiosity... I cannot figure it out! I was told I pointed my fingers to the sky before I could talk. Isn't that strange? Now many people (I think it perhaps started with Nietzsche, and I may be totally wrong) have said if you don't see a meaning you have to detect it in yourself. Go inside and you shall find it. Now this is a perhaps a very spiritual or even mystical activity and it totally contradicts the ego hypothesis. Now with spiritual I associate something that gives you that kind of inner peace that you wouldn't experience otherwise. A connection to the higher... meaning???? Hence I think Meaning and Purpose is connected to something higher than Ego. What's your take?

I have not watched this video but I bought the Plant Paradox Book over a year ago. It was most interesting reading for a non-expert. Some BS? Maybe... As I was suffering from all sorts of physical symptoms the general medics did not want to deal with, probably rooted psychologically, my wife and I decided reluctantly to actually try his diet. All I can say is the following: It takes preparation, research and expense (we did NOT buy supplements. Probably a bad idea) It sucks, it is pretty hard core and as we are foodies to some degree, it was most challenging. We stuck with it for about 6 months and still follow some of the advice. Especially the cleanse was hard core! Now the positives: Essentially all what the good doctor (and I agree, he is some sort of a lovable clown in his videos) said has actually manifested in reality. I am not overweight, nearly underweight but have lost 3.5 kg i next to no time. Almost all of my medical symptoms have disappeared. One big issue I was plagued with for years within 10 days - just gone! The cleanse was about the worst part, as he predicted, the tiredness was excruciating and took much longer than advertised. How I survived in my job was a mystery. Tells you how much *** we eat and we don't eat so called bad food, really. I cannot comment on cancer but I suppose stuff can be achieved. There sure are many success cases. Don't dismiss it, if you have serious issues try it and then judge. All I can say it worked for both of us. Now we are considering going back on it, as it simply worked and essentially most of what we commonly feed ourselves is really not food. Our culture's paradigms are really screwed. I think the doctor (and many other loved/hated ones) is on to something, sure he will not have it all figured out but he's put some work in it. It takes year to do research and will be ever be sure about anything in life and in the human body? It is a too complex system. Yes, he is great in marketing, but why not? In the end his diet has truly helped many, and this way the message does get out there. Yes, he earns well surely. But he is providing value, something that most of us just don't - in the larger scale of things. But what I believe in the end, any curing diet is also a symptom fix. This diet seems to really remove the actual stimulus for the disease manifestations. If you don't fix the underlying problem (most likely psychological and behavioural) then your back to square one and that's where I find myself now! Systems thinking applied, it is holistic issue. Good luck!

Greetings from BUCKS. Can feel with you, as I am in a similar situation but I think I am gradually finding a way. I am a big proponent of what Covey used to say that eventually your life's mission will find you and not the other way around. But it is difficult in this noisy world. Excuse the radio analogy: Imagine tuning a radio in the olden days, there used to be lots of noise between the stations and there are many stations. The problem these days is that people focus too much on the problem, e.g. they sit there and know they feel empty but also do not tune anymore, or their reception bandwidth has become too narrow. E.g. you better use a broad band antenna, suck in lots of signals and find something of value and stay for a while (as Jim Rohn once said). Find something that resonates with you and check it out a bit more. Something got you here right? DO (new) things ideally do and try more things. You just don't know what is really out there, our paradigms are totally limited by our belief and the consequential emptiness one feels. Maybe you can shave off some hours of your soul sucking job and dedicate it to some internal work. If you have no family e.g. wife and kids, you are a lucky man in this respect as you have peace and quiet. A good place to start is to go back into your childhood days and find things that were a joy to do. Or remember a place that made you happy. Start to ask some chained WHY questions. Elicit your values. These are tiny steps to go into the right direction. Take some time and do stuff you really enjoy. It may lead to to something/somewhere else. People generally stop tuning around and resign, blame the rut they are in for their inability to to have choice / time, e.g. play victim. Thought the same once... Read a bit on Logotherapy, it is interesting, too. The second problem is that we are so distracted, by all these gazillions of signals these days there is basically no more noise between the stations! It is so overwhelmingly full of signals that it is info-overload and it also paralyses our desire to look for something in the first place. It literally weakens us. Listen to Leo's distraction episode. Or we are overdosing on (quality) infotainment (like this site) and thus become inactive and forget that we can actually DO things. We watch others on you tube/instructables etc. do shit, but we all we manage is scroll the screen and feel empty. Go out, leave the damned dis-tracktor at home. Open your senses, broaden and open your awareness. Connect with others (I know quality people are like gold dust and are very hard to find). It may take years but I am sure something will resonate with you eventually. Follow the small signals just above the noise floor. Listen carefully, inside for weak signals (possibly from the past). Good luck. There is plenty of help here and in books, use it. You will eventually guide yourself somewhere but you need to act and not wallow in self pity.

The guy is spot in in many ways. We have developed for ourselves a totally screwed-up paradigm on how we must live, work, be happy and how we even perceive the world. All this is totally contrived and unnatural. In fact it is that the little, simple things truly make us happy and not the latest i-crap distracktor. As he says, this unnatural, complicated and complex lifestyle is making us sick and unhappy. Had the same experience, university sucked badly but I endured with great pain. So is the job now and the pre-planned lifestyle that follows (which we were conditioned to follow). It is almost impossible to escape. Ridicule and alienation will follow. Simplify simplify, simplify. As Leo and many people suggest, we all should live in a cave for a while perhaps? It probably ain't too bad. Natural Paradigm ---------------------------------------Contrived Paradigm Freedom of time and movement ------------------Committments, (Wage)Slavery, Independence (from gvt and corporations) and self reliance ----------Dependence and Taxation and need for "service industry" Object, live below gvt radar ----------------------------Subject of Gvt (taxcow), follow all the rules or else Community (to be) --------------------------------------Competing Individualism and materialism (appear to be) That's why you see people (esp. children) happy in the poorest places of the world. They play with bottlecaps for hours and love it. They value and respect family, the experience of elders. They are not yet infected by consumerism. Look in places like Japan e.g. The famous Okinawa examples where people are outliving all others, partly through a big sense of community and that results in joy. Here I don't even know my neighbour. And we all have to re-locate miles from our home for a fkn JOB (just over broke). At least then we can afford a loan for this German car... (and be happy for a day). If you have watched the disney film Coco, part of it's success is that it resonated with many people showing the simple lifestyle with focus on core values and respect for the family members. It is relationships after all what makes you happy (in the end and ideally earlier if you get it). I heard a good saying once, never fall in love with something or someone who doesn't love you back. Also I think there is a tendency that there is an odd non-linear relationship of general education and happiness. Surely, uneducated people get themselves into a lot of problems but mainly in a consumerism infected world where they chase the latest show offs. But in a rural situation they can also be very content and happy and human. Increasing education makes your thinking more complex, you can see it in the forum. There may be some value in it but I doubt that it helps much for your general levels of satisfaction. Back to the basics?

Being mid life now and my life basically not satisfactory I have been doing a lot of reading and pondering in recent years. Call me a seeker or not, most of us want something that feels better, right? And the more I read I am coming across this what I might call an approach to life that involves letting-go and trusting that “all will work out fine in the end and then you'll finally be happy”. Now this may be a simplified summary for now and especially for a very methodical person as myself it appears very much like a new-age or hippie-like concept - but I am starting to wonder if I ought to take it more seriously or if I am not even on to something with it. What I want to know if there are some people here who have made some real life experience with it and can feed back credible info instead of what some well known happiness and success sales gurus (yet they may be correct) promulgate. Now let me postulate, just for the sake of this article, that there are three approaches to life, all of them essentially go through a stage which I call the “social scripting stage” (where one is subjected to parents and the schooling system, then programmed to fit into society, get a good job with benefits etc, iow. you become one of the crowd, and what is being taught is a very ego-centric life paradigm. (see MJ deMarco Scripted, recommendable reading)). The end result is normally pre-programmed mediocrity with average results in addition to a mid- or end-life crisis. Now the resulting paths from the scripting events are what I want to call here A, B or C. “A” is eventually living the victim-mentality where life did not deliver the promises that you expected and everything and everybody else is to blame for your unhappiness, you get pushed around and are re-active only, carry the baggage of past and future worries and life sucks badly. You resist life and become a total neurotic with all the consequences. Alternatively you may manage to go for route B, the more ambitious approach - perhaps or after failing with A and a resulting insight (but also ego-centric), that is more pro-active (Covey Habit 1 - you are the programmer). E.g. you have goals and vision scenarios that you focus on and carry out decisions in order to meet them, aspire to a particular career, etc. The focus is on DO and eventually HAVE. You think you know what you want and you go for it (in the extreme publicised by Dan Pena). And if you achieve something this way (your HAVEs), the result may be that the ladder you climbed will be leaning against the wrong wall as you finally reach the top (Covey). Happened for many. Also Route B seems to be connected with lots of struggle, effort and willpower. Also it will most likely leave you unsatisfied as the ego just can't get enough - ever! I have experienced A, thought the solution was in B (as society wants to make you believe) but I read more and more about C which I find most intriguing and hard to get my mind around. But maybe, just maybe it is the best way to approach it after all... (late insight?) and everything else is just simply human arrogance arising from a big societal construct that we have built up over history. Now route C has been publicised by many spiritual people and sages, it is almost is the opposite to route B. It reminds me to “The Secret” or “Law of Attraction” -business that was so popular because it promised you something for next to nothing and the “effortless success” stuff what J.Canfield wants to make you believe can happen. Yes, I have a hunch that there could truly be effortless success, the key is struggle vs. joy. Effort then just becomes enjoyable and thus “effortless”. And this is what we should aspire to – not the willpower struggles of route B. This “letting go” approach focuses on letting the “rules of nature work for you” - whatever they really are, let me not go into this now. Now “going C” is hard for most A and B people to comprehend, especially since many of us are control freaks or we are the rational people who do not believe in any “spiritual” or whatever intelligent external guidance from (lets call it) the universe or perhaps intuition. C has been made very public by e.g. Michael Singer with the “Surrender Experiment”, also by e.g. Robin Sharma in the Saint, the Surfer and the CEO and many others. Now as route B doesn't seem to work well either I want to throw a question into the room, could it really be possible that route C works somewhat or that it worked for you? Key for route C is the tiny but powerful word “trust” and the non-resistance approach to life. Now to trust is really hard for us, as most of us have been screwed or even used some time in our lives, so we have become very cautious. Also we want immediate feedback. But thankfully trust is is having some revival (Covey Jr.). Now, I have progressed quite well psychologically and have eliminated lots of internal and external drama by reducing my neuroses and accepting more and more the world as it is and life as it goes on. I am excited about this progress and life is clearly better. The next stage would be to really trust that things will move and change into the “right” direction. I feel that I might be able to do that but am wary that I am just kidding myself with this believing and trusting and wasting more time on some “fad”. Gimme evidence, right (rationalism)? Because trust implies there's a belief. If you believe and trust while knowing it is a belief, is that high awareness or still low awareness? Is it still trust? It can become almost a religious question here... One important thing to note about route C is the claim that you ought to be humble and admit that “you don't really know what is best for you”. This is interesting but hard to swallow if you were deep in B, and that essentially nature knows best and will guide you assuming you will only allow it to happen. Consequently you will be able to fulfil your potential and your natural mission will open up in life and happiness is the obvious consequence... Instead of the control-approach to life (B) this is the total release-approach to life, especially the release from the ego-centric approach e.g. that you need to have it your way only and to serve primarily your own agenda, and also to follow what society has prescribed you to do to (followerhip). Now I agree this route is hard for all of us who still have our egos intact or parts of it and yes we all went through the conditioning of society. A lot of unlearning and relaxed trusting needs to happen. This route is really so out of the ordinary that it will be hard to implement without being ridiculed by society. Singer's book and experiences are therefore intriguing and entertaining to most but is it really credible or even copyable? He seems a nice enough guy, so is Sharma and I am tempted to give it a try. The only action one should engage in is to react wisely or with intuition to whatever life then offers you... I am wondering if I should I give up (my few) goals or even hopes and give it a try and just see where it will take me or is it just wishful thinking / new-age hocus pocus? What is then Actualized promoting? Is SA not really a version of route B? Self Actualising by name follows a self agenda and is ego focused, right? Although the results may be of some service to the greater community. I am not yet a student of Spiral Dynamics but for those who know, isn't route C a “higher” way? Also, is Route C truly compatible with what you have built so far, e.g. you have family etc. relationships... I am a little concerned that you will have to be prepared to abandon all. Will not life throw you into odd directions that are then totally incompatible with your previous life? I have a suspicion that this artificial life we have created for ourselves is totally out of what with what might have been planned for us. Could it perhaps be phased in gradually? In some books it seems to be sold like this. Am I afraid of possible Change? E.g. in Sharma's book there was the mention of that “relationships are transitory” and they teach you what you need to know at the right time. I agree partly with this as sometimes they are difficult to sustain after a while or you sustain them forever with total ignorance just because of society's expectations of you. Consequently you have pain in your life. What I don't get is that many Self Help Books e.g. Sharma's in this example preach a mixture of B and C. Now are they really compatible? That's a lot for now. Let me hear your thoughts and opinions.... M