Eph75

To me success is to effortlessly live in the current moment. I meditate in order increase my concentration levels, have better focus, have space of mind and a calmness and clarity that makes me see what I wouldn't see otherwise. It reduces mental chatter and as a result productive ideas seem to appear from nowhere when not even trying. It's a help in consciousness development. It does not make you happy by itself, but it helps creating a setting in which you can work on yourself from a creative perspective. It brings you closer to new insights.

Who says you have to become a sage There's a misunderstanding that when being unattached - or less attached - to desires you're not supposed to make money or own things. That's not so, you can still do all of that but for different and more powerful reasons, or even for no reason at all. The things or pursuits won't own you. You don't need to be rich, but it's convenient to be able to buy things. You don't need a luxurious car to travel from A to B. You don't need to buy self-esteem. You don't have to look good in others' eyes. And so on. Being poor, you still need to cover some basic needs, so that you don't suffer in poverty, struggling with food and shelter and so on. But do you need to be "rich" - and more importantly - why do you think that you need to be rich? And what is true success?

If you just want to make money and think that it will make you happy, you're in the wrong place All this work here will move you towards seeing that all of that is what is actually causing the suffering you experience. You think that you need to fix something by adding more. When in fact it happens through reduction, especially reducing attachments to ideas that you just need that one more thing and then you can be happy. It will never happen, it will create more needs and more suffering. Trying to walk both paths and resisting the self-actualization one will create a cognitive dissonance and resulting in even more suffering. The self-actualization path is the right one to walk. But you have to have matured to a certain degree developmentally speaking in order to appreciate it. It's like aiming for being the world's fastest at running 100m but you're stuck thinking that it can be achieved without committing to hard training, healthy diet and so on. And you end up just feeling bad/disappointed about remaining slow.

And so "victims" find "thinly veiled attacks" in anything that is touching a for them touchy subject. It's the very definition of the victim role. But I'm sorry, I won't further side-track the discussion. I'd just like to invite you to contemplation on the subject.

Just a friendly observation. It's easy to miss our blind spots. E.g. you say that Indians don't know how to play victims, but you call out the racist card and want the thread locked while there's no racist content been written, merely observations related to culture and certain humor. That is playing victim.

@Preety_India in a sense, you confirm what was said, taking it too seriously, getting triggered. Making a hen out of a speck of a feather.

Why do you want to actualize? The very reason why is often the wrong reason as to why doing it. E.g. people do it because it seems to be a good thing, want to be like others, have others look up to you as you do look up to others that seem to have their shit sorted. Using it to get rich and famous, get all the materialistic stuff you always wanted. And so on, and so on. Sure you can fulfill petty desires like that, but the underlying drive is about getting away from all of that. Typically when you find your way into self-actualization you've already sorted out some psychological basic needs. But it's easy to just look at YouTube videos (Leo) , finding the way to a forum, call yourself "son of Leo" and then try to be something because it seems neat - that is not a good thing. There are a lot of people here with rather severe psychological issues that needs to be sorted out in order for the rest to fall in place. Without that there's going to be a lot of confusion. The path is thorny because you don't like what you find, or don't understand what you see. And maybe you have not already committed to change, as it's all about changing as an individual. People don't realize that by pursuing self-actualization you have to let go of who you think you are and allow something new to emerge. More likely is there going to be a desire for change - whatever that is you don't know - but at the same time having a tremendous internal resistence toward changing who you think you are. Is self-actualization necessary? No. Developmental growth will still happen to some extent, for different reasons. That can lead towards self-actualization and a different perspective. But fully dedicating your life to transcending your current "self" is not for everyone and can cause more suffering than it would have without the desire to self-actualize - whatever you, at whatever state you happen to be at, think that it means and what it will give you. So, what is your "why"... That why defines the need. When that why is strong enough and the current state is causing too much suffering, then, life tend to find its way into this stuff and you could just happen to find yourself smack-in-the-middle of the initiation of a self-actualizing process without noticing. From that stance it is much easier to accept what you find.

That's tier 1 talking ? there is always more, and it tend to become more and more, and more and more interesting. Even just "nothing" is enormous. What if the ability for understanding complexity in tier 2 makes living even more easy than what can be imagined from a tier 1 point-of-view? And what if you can make the movie yourself? The unseen third option. You can fill your life with complexity but that isn't the same as living a complex life.

@VeganAwake Thank you ??

Oh-oh, be careful with this one. It might just be THE trap. It just also happen to be "the easy answer".

Spiral wizardry is called for - offer information in a format and depth that is most helpful to the person that holds an inquiry all in order to help that someone in their own path and growth from their perspective. @Nahm I love your posts - ❤ - but they often require a certain level of understanding to be possible to be consumed. If you don't already have a that relative level of understanding, your wisdom would easily be misunderstood or not understood at all.

Sentient being meaning "having an inherent ability to be self-aware and thinking" - i.e. all human beings - where does "without internal chatter" come from/fit into your picture? I'd just like to confirm this; we can easly create emotional states and control the shifting on and off of those. It is a "fun" exercise that gives a somewhat terrefying insight when doing this in multiple sequences.

It's just a state, one of many; wanting to discuss on a down-to-earth way that help making sense of progressing congnative and developmental growth. Perhaps it's not so much the content of the answers provided as it is the format of the answers themselves. Both may tell the same story but the typical "spiritual answer" is oftentimes much to implicit to be helpful when just trying to find "a-or-any" way forward.

Suffering comes from desires, wants and needs, trying to be or get something that you currently don't already possess. Suffering can of course be seen as a calling for you to take action and change - i.e. reduce your desires, if you care to attach that meaning to it, which certainly is near at hand when you've gone through suffering to a point that you take charge and change how your relate to being. Desire is a vicious circle, there is never enough. Desire is addictive. At the same time, suffering has no meaning, it is useless. It's more of a product. Some can't be avoided. A lot we create for ourselves, such as through desire. But with all suffering, we can change how we relate to it. "Just being" helps with this dynamic.

"Just being" can manifest in different ways. Not necessarily sitting in a cave, meditation om being nothing. I do have a normal life, I do normal stuff but focus on "being" changes the dynamics between "you" and "something". Being content with "just being" still means that you can do things. You can e.g. make a career and earn money but the things that hou choose to do are done because you can, not because you need to in order to fulfill some idea that is stuck in your head, in the society, the culture etc. Yes I have, excessively, stuff like this is a journey and not a destination to reach, and yes it has literally completely transformed me and the life I live.

So what you want to hear is that living is meaningless. Not in a sense that it's useless in any way, but it has "no meaning". That's not very inspiring is it, especially when we're indoctrinated that there is supposed to be a meaning. Our existence here has no purpose, no meaning, it's just being. Our ability to be aware starts to look for a meaning so that there's something that we can pursue and fulfill so that we can get the reward of feeling "meaningful". So the point of living is "just being". When we accept "just being" we can awaken to it being the path to happiness/peace and the pursuit for that meaning that we previously were supposed to find, somewhere or in something, was actually the very thing that kept us miserable. But you didn't want to mix in spirituality. That's difficult, because that "meaning" is found within your spirituality. Also, life having "no meaning" doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't pursue achieving things. You can fill your "being" doing things that appear meaningful to you. If that helps you in your "being", that's all good. But we tend to do things for the wrong reasons, because we feel that we have to live up to something or match some external or internal expectations, and that makes "being" more difficult and oftentimes painful. That's why it's so important to detach/let go of such attachments, so that we can "just be".

By not trying to control them at all, having clarity of mind, absolute stillness of thought when you go to bed will give you the most inspiring sleep you can have, meditative in itself, literally. We're generally trying too hard. When letting go, the mind lessens its distractions and processes with clarity and seemingly without effort or attempts. When not distracted, your mind will process by itself, what it needed. When distracted, your mind will process also, what is focused upon, which is the distraction. So, focus on trying to get smarter, intentionally, in a sense your distraction is consisting of thoughts on why you are attached to the idea of needing to be "smarter". Get rid of your mental distraction and you progressively and over time will "get smarter" (depending on what you think of being smart is).

While seeing the deal with your ex-wife through, which is noble, she is taking advantage of your kindness. While your kindness is again noble, when not met also with gratitude but hostility, why bother? That might sound harsh, but your ultimate responsibilty is against yourself, not others in first hand. Not playing your game against her rules. It sounds a bit like that's again the situation with your cofounder. But in all this, what do YOU want? The ecstacy you feel is the temporary release of pressure/anxiety from playing with the idea of no longer chasing an attachment to which you're not fully aligned. IMO there's nothing wrong with chasing dreams, there's nothing wrong with a business that brings you wealth (eventually), but the key, and what makes that healthy or unhealthy, is what the reasons why you chase it are, and staying true to them and what is happening with/to you on that journey. It should be our underlying motivation that drives us, not what others want, and not obligations of shame to not meet those. Living is right here and right now. Personal integrity is built right here and right now, and will serve you for the rest of your life. Unfortunately life is full of difficult choices, but when taken, and not just indecisively following the flow of others pressure/needs, we grow stronger and happier. That sense of autonomy is fundamental. Sometimes we have few choices, but we can always make a choice that is fully embraced. If you choose to fulfill the agreement with your ex, do so, fully. If you choose to continue your partnership with your Chineese venture, do so fully, while keeping your autonomy (not adopting you partners' philosophy). If that means the that partnership can't be, so be it. Listen to your heart and your intuition, what are they telling you? Try not to mix in obligations, shame, pressure or guilt. What do you want? What is important to you? You are very young. You have all of your adult life ahead of you. Don't allow whatever is happening right now define who you should be, it takes time to find our real selves. Remember, not to take life too seriously.

Just like excessive negative thinking can make you addicted to feeding your mind with negative stuff which keeps the cycle going, you can get addicted to making yourself stay feeling depressed. I myself in the past with a long going depression I used to binge watch depressing movies and it made me feel numb - which felt better in a miserable way. Probably because I identified with the misery. Doing something that was considered fun was horrible as it was forcing me to feel like I had to/was supposed to enjoy that thing. Birthdays was the worse, since there was no getting away from family members celibrating me. I just wanted to be alone and be full of myself and my misery. It's things like this that makes it so hard to get out of long going/deep depression. The mind just wants to keep wallowing in its miserable state. What you're experiencing is maybe something similar?

Knowing what you want and what you stand for/value, when "yes" is wrong for you and when "no" is called for and then being strong in that moment and standing up for who you are and your values is what personal integrity is. Be strong at times when your personal integrity gets challenged People around you will quickly recognize that as a strength and they will start behaving differently in these kind of regards. If you fail to stand up for yourself, equally, they learn that putting you under pressure makes you fold. Also, learning to say no makes you grow as an individual.

Learning to say no is important. Usually getting a no doesn't mean much if anything, but saying yes when you don't really want to, or want to for the wrong reasons costs a lot of negative energy. It is much better, and more respectful, to learn self-responsibility and learn to say no than to dodge people based on the risk of ending up in a situation where you get forced into saying yes/can't say no. Also people quickly learn to ask for things from yay-sayers, most likely unknowingly taking advantage of that persons percievable "kindness". But it's not kindness at that point, there is probably some or a lot of resentment underneath your "kindness". Learning to say no is one of lifes important - and hard - lessons. Would you yourself rather get a plain no from someone or would you rather be ignored? With that said, that doesn't mean that you have to let anyone into your life. That's fully up to you choosing, but everything we can do, we can choose to do with self-respect and respect for others.

@TheUniverseIsLove Yes, sometimes things unravel without apparent reason, simply because the time for us, is right.

You can't change people, people change thmeselves. It's not that people don't want to change, they don't want to be changed. So being the catalyzer for change that you are looking to be is difficult, it's an effort that can only be that effort and if it create change is fully up to the individual. So the only thing you can do is to be who you need to be in order to resonate with that individual and communicate with individual i such a way that it creates a space in which he or her can stretch his or hers sense making. Depending on the scenario you can create challenges for that individual that creates an environment in which that someone needs to operate in which it is depanded for he/her to do that stretch. In a work related scenario that could be a challenging promotion or some sort of role that require that individual to adopt skills and abilities that are outside of their current skill set. In a non-work related scenario it becomes a lot more difficult as you can't play on accountability, the individual simple have no reason to accept your challenges except for the simole reason that they themselves find them in some way intriguing. You're left to communicating with them in such a way that they get to stretch their sense making and reasoning to new grounds and thereby trigger developmental growth. Another way to trigger developmental growth is to go through crisis. In a worl related scenario you can implement deliberate "mini crisis" that psychoactivates people in suvh a way that they have to make new sense out of a situation that they previously haven't experiences. In a non-work related scenario, creating crisis would seems a bit sociopathic or even psychopathic. You simply don't have thw right to toy with peoples lives. So you are pretty much left to reasoning with themnand getting them to reason for themselves through coaching like conversations that are deliberately designed to be developmental. With some luck you trigger unvonscious developmental growth / upgraded sense making through such conversations but they are more likely to be rather local than globally psychoactive in such a way that they are more comparable with subliminal messages than actual growth - in a sense manipulativ. In a best case scenario it triggerst a conscious/aware growth which works like a switch, something that switches suddenly, like an a-ha experience leaving the person with a "oh wow, how did I not see that before"-experience that trigger an active hunger for continued growth. So in short, it's a lot about being a spiral wizard in such a way they you communicate with different individuals in different ways so that you offer what that individual needs in the exact time and space to overcome challenges that they themselves are incapable of achieving on their own. A trap with being a catalyzer for others change is that you have a plan for in what way they should change. You can and should only set out to help upgrade their inner sense making process so that they themselves can make sense in a more complex way. What sense that is, that is not up to you to decide. They themselves will sort that out.

It's probably been there all along. It's probably something inside you that have shifted that allows you to pick it up. Like a radio turning its tuning in such a way that it picks up a new and previously unexperienced channel, broadcasting that L, O, V and E. All is good..

@Keyhole Yes I agree with you, he clearly makes sure that being that dependency isn't his cup of tea, but that unfortunatly does not prevent others from making him into their personal tea bag so it can be a one way thing. I don't think that the journal section of the forum represents the people that takes his word as gospel, from what I've seen. The journaling people are likely to be further into own contemplation than blind followers. The blind followers might not be terribly many, but I see them now and again on here.