Apparition of Jack

I'm not sure real sure what this has to do with stage green. In all honesty, it kinda sounds like you just had your ego hurt and wanted to come here to vent.

I would bring back devotion and public displays of the sacred. Things like leaving offerings to deities, people praying / chanting / doing yoga in public, communal festivals honouring certain figures or ideas, and so on. In such a secular, post-religious world I don't know what this would effectively look like nor do I know how to get people on board with such a movement, but it's something my heart longs to see nonetheless. Our left-brained, rationalist urban environments could do with a healthy dose of spiritualification, if you ask me.

I can't answer any of these questions in depth, since I'm still figuring them out myself. One thing I've found that helps a lot is to have an attitude of courage and gutso, however. A lot of us are socialised (by the media, by our peers, by civilisation at large) to essentially be passive desperates always hoping for a magical "big break" (no matter whether that's the the perfect partner, the perfect job, sudden social acceptance, etc.) This isn't going to come, and if it does, its only because you manifested it yourself. You need to take risks, stand up for yourself and say provocative things if you're going to get anywhere or change anything in this life, especially in a society as corrupt and complex as our own. Of course, I'm not saying you need to be reckless and needlessly endanger yourself and others, and there's a time and place to keep things quiet too, but on the whole, developing character and gravitas by challenging yourself and others is something you should be aiming to achieve. People love someone who's sure of themselves and has the experience to back it up - even people who are opposed to your ideas will begrudgingly respect you if you demonstrate you have both a good heart and a good mind. Now of course, developing these things is a skill like any other, and starting out it will be quite hard, especially if you're just first waking up to the gravity of the predicament us modern people find ourselves in. Compassion exercises help well (metta meditation, for instance) as a way to ground your motivation and ideas in love for all (INCLUDING and ESPECIALLY love for yourself), and act as a safeguard against your own / other's egoic impulses. Finding the right people to challenge you and support you can go along way too. And finally, an attitude of carrying with you the heart of the warrior, being a champion of light and truth, someone willing to let go for the sake of others, can be an incredible narrative tool to give you the energy / inner security you need to say and do the things that need to be said and done at the times they need to be said and done. I hope all of this makes sense. Again, this is not advice to be foolhardy and self-destructive, but rather brave and pro-active. If you want to do anything truly great in this world, you will need allow yourself to be vulnerable and spontaneous when the times call for it.

Turquoise wisdom from an enlightened tortoise

You have turned money into a false idol and put all of your faith in it out of a misplaced impression it will help you rise above your survival-based fears. It will not, and in fact your faith in it as a false god will only enslave you to them. Only radical compassion, insight, open-mindedness and an ability and willingness to face the confusion, contorting, confronting truths about reality and society can do that.

That's the one! Thanks Leo

It was something along the same train of thought as a Leibniz's "monad", in the sense that it referred to the basic "substances" of reality, but unlike monads (which refer to "one-in-one") it instead meant "two-in-one" or "both two-and-one." I really forgot what the word was, but I think it was something like "hologad" or something sounding like that. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? EDIT: Pre-emptive thank you for any replies!

It honestly sounds like you're just salty that you're not part of this "mafia" that you speak of. "The lady doth protest too much" and all that.

Taxes are utterly necessary if you enjoy not being stabbed for whatever modicum of food you have in your house. Every single human lives within a collective (with ever-changing and complex needs,) and it is the responsibility of each individual to ensure that collective is healthy and functioning, less it fall into violence, hatred and anarchy. Taxes are one of the most straight-forward, efficient and responsible ways to reach that end. It's not taxes you should be afraid of, it's the people who tell you you don't need them.

I have sent you a PM since this conversation is getting too long for the public forum.

I guarantee you I have faced truths much darker than whatever you can throw at me. Try me.

I can handle whichever truth you throw at me.

They really don't want to know what? You need to be clearer here.

This is a rather incoherent chain of thought to be honest. What "other things" do people change to make up for their weakness?

So you're upset that people use desire as a reason to hold their views, then freely admit that you do exactly that? I'm confused.

Who says reality needs to be ordered and fair? Chaos is an intrinsic part of our existence, even modern physics corroborates this. It's ironic that you deride desire so much when your view of reality being entirely "ordered" and "fair" is just that, a desire.

"God" can mean countless different things. If we're not on the same page as to what we're arguing about, then this conversation will go nowhere.

@ColdFacts I have a question, what do you think is meant by the word "God?"

@ColdFacts So if I'm getting this right, you mean that it's through desire that the concept of humans (for God) or God (for humans) is created? Also I'm not sure where blaming comes into this Do you have any proof of this?

Could you elaborate? I'm not sure I follow

What makes you think the focus is on unfulfilled desires?

Felix does seem to have taken more interest in the "deeper" topics of life in recent months, but I think it'd be a far cry to say he's now wholeheartedly onboard the self-actualisation train or anything like that. He still seems very caught up in the Orange world of internet memes, shitposting, and so on (in no small part because he's built up an identity and source of $$ from it), and I also get the feeling he's dealing with a Blue shadow. Still, it's encouraging to see him maturing a little bit, and if he can grow successfully then he can act as a good conduit for getting younger people into philosophy / critical inquiry and so on.

The word "person" comes from the Latin word "persona", meaning "mask" What might people be the mask of?

Who says music and enlightenment are far apart? Art has always been a valid part of any journey towards liberation! So long as you use your music to channel beauty and truth and not just cheap entertainment for $$, I really don't see any issue with wanting to pursue that as part of your life purpose.

I feel like I have the opposite story, Mandy. For most of my life I have grown up and lived in large urban conglomerates, and living in the country was not something I ever could've or would've imagined myself desiring (which I now do, for a whole list of spiritual / ethical / philosophical reasons.) In fact, I even remember visiting my grandparent's holiday property in the country and being afraid to go out at night because everything seemed so "lonely" and quiet! However, after developing spiritual tendencies in my late teens and having a very rude spiritual awakening in my early 20s, I have found myself detesting the ethos and aesthetics of modern urban society, probably for the reasons you've listed out. Being a spiritually sensitive person, I've found the urban environment I once loved and cherised (or perhaps had internalised?) to now to be borderline nightmarish at times. Endless electro-magnetic radiation, hordes of people whos faces look like they're on the verge of a nervous breakdown every waking moment, pollution, obnoxious, mind-controlling advertising everywhere, etc. It has resulted in me being diagnosed with "agoraphobia", yet I feel the more accurate diagnosis is simply "being fed up of modern bullshit" That's not to say there aren't benefits of living in such over-crowded hive-cities though. Having so many different types of people in one place means you're able to meet so many interesting characters with all sorts of wisdom to offer you. Also, since there's less of a strict "communal" culture, people tend to be more open-minded and relaxed about lifestyle choices, beliefs, etc. There's less pressure to conform to a set of family ideals or religious beliefs and so on. I could choose to do anything with my life and the society around me would be more or less accepting (unless it was something crazy like trying to evolve the stage Orange/Green paradigm towards a more Yellow/Turquoise one ;P ) In a sense, living here, in this environment, is kind of like being part of a "spiritual underground" for awakening. There are places you can go and people you can meet who will assist you along your journey, but they're few and far between and you have to be keen-eyed enough to know how to spot them and what to look for. For the most part, you have to put on a "mask" or a facade of the sort of "regular, mundane" (or in my view, crude and ignorant) life people expect of you, and its only with those you're very close to and in moments of privacy can you really be free to explore the universe.