Snader

Oh yeah, it’s crazy how different people are when we look beyond surface. Like just having a ”normal” conversation with a new person requires you to latch onto huge amount of comformity and social rules (which of course is mostly wired and comes unconsciously). I love it how those built boundaries of a comformist mind start to slowly melt when you get to know someone better, considering you are both actively working to be more authentic and real. At some point after peeling a layer after a layer there will be a level that seperate you two. I think that true friendship to some degree is being able to first of all acknowledge that difference and then accept it completely without the need to understand it. To respect the uniqueness in other.

Would highly recommend to check it out. Although it’s a realistic simulation game, you can get deep into role playing and create scenarios that are so absurd or silly that they really push the boundaries of reality in a fun way. It’s quite educational as well, as the social dynamics are very detailed and accurate: the characteristics of your character and your decisions in relation to the world around you will very realistically affect how well you can manage your realm.

@Leo Gura What's your take on Crusader Kings? Have you played the franchise?

Very good question, it is indeed tricky to find proper balance. There are big difference in which activities or states of being people define to be about survival and what is more connected to their spirit. Also the labels of survival and spirit often have different meanings, so this is generally hard subject to discuss. I personally have my moments when I'm "in the zone", locked into some specific task/(s) that are serving my survival, for example when I'm working or playing video games. I also have moments when I'm totally in the opposite end, for example going for a retreat or sitting in silence meditating. Anyway, most of my life I would say is some form of mixture, where those "two different worlds" play together. I take as much as I can from my deepest realizations to my mondaying everyday life. This can be for example a tendency to consciously be kinder and more compassionate towards others or stopping to breath and enjoy a beautiful scenery while heading home at the end of the day. I also often try to be more present when doing simple tasks such as eating or cleaning the house. Of course it's not that easy and there are moments when I would want to renounce material life and dive into divine while my petty human life requires attention. There are also moments when I would like to focus on some practical stuff such as having fun and socializing, while the sense of meaninglessness tries to creep in, making it hard to enjoy and be present. Sometimes I do the ''wrong thing'' purposefully, for example if I realize I have a deep biological need for it. I believe it's these hard controversial moments where we grow and become more holistically mature. We must acknowledge the reality of human survival and the fact that it is hard to live truthfully and enjoy life on a deep level while being internally and externally bound to selfishness and ignorance. It seems like a skill that can be developed. I myself aim for balance by combining those two worlds to some extent, while also being understanding and forgiving to myself when I lose grip and get lost in either of the ends for a while. We always learn from those moments, if we pay attention.

I have pretty much dumbed the labels or "spiritual theory" such as God Awakening, Transcendence, Absolute Love, etc. Through different practices I gain insights and experience awakenings, but I try not to label them too much, even though they often have a certain kind of theme or flavor in them, for example infinity, love, oneness, or many simultaneously. I've had crazy enough experiences to be convinced that not everything real and truthful can be understood in how we conventionally try to understand as human beings. Therefor I have also let go of the need to understand. I'd say stopping the need to understand has counter-intuitively enabled me to gain understanding. I basically just aim to gently raise my consciousness while living pretty normal life and slowly more and more stuff start making sense and the puzzle getting solved piece by piece, of course in a way I can't perfectly put into words. I think it's important to take your time and not force understanding. If I had the need to understand everything, make sense of everything or label all my experiences right away, I would probably lose my mind. Making the journey super personal and keeping it mainly separate from my social life and social identity has also helped a lot. I don't have pressure to communicate my experiences to others so I can kind of "keep the data in its purest form". This although comes with a cost of loneliness and lack of "spiritual connection" to others.

Stop manipulating us to tell you how to grow, you red devil! Just kidding. Great self-reflection and honesty!

I don't know about you but for me watching any sex scenes with family isn't okay. When I'm invested in a movie on emotional level and a sex scene comes up, to me many emotions may pop up, as sex to me means more than something mechanical that could be rationalized away. The awkwardness comes from everyone working their ass off to act cool or covering their emotions with jokes and humor. Of course in certain company those jokes help you to not make the situation socially awkward, which to many is way more important than emotional authenticity. Maybe some parents have educated their children to have a healthy sex-emotion relationship so that those scenes can be watched without any awkwardness or acts of emotional defence, but I think it's rare.

When you become conscious of the fact that you don't really need more of those things and start consciously controlling your action around your desires, your greediness starts to reduce. So we might say greediness = unconsciousness. After all it's just a label. In a way we will always be greedy as human beings, as long as we are alive. Where you draw the line is subjective, and is determined by your perspective, values, culture, personality and other stuff that make you who you are.

Yeah, no doubt. But for many that shallowness can also function as a damper to keep the experience from going too deep too fast.

Although solitude and purity of substance is optimal for pursuing truth with psychedelics, but isn't it a bit crude to completely talk down the ceremonial way of doing psychedelics? It's not the way for you, but it might be for many. Not everyone are highly introverted, independent and conscious. Many young people doing psychedelics drive themselves too deep to an existential crisis and cynicism that they will find it hard to operate in life. For many it might be best to have this social component to their tripping, at first at least. I think it's the solitude in the process that usually breaks people, and it seem to have a lot to do with personality. Some seem to need to have people around, until they might come to a point of realizing they don't need them. You have your way and you want to push people to do it that way too, but as role model I think it would be reasonable for you to be more supportive to other ways of doing things.

I get it. It's frustrating to see people (like Leo) labeling complex phenomenon or action as a stage of development, while you know it's not that simple. And it never is that simple. It's just a useful tool to give a rough estimate of the situation and when it comes to SD the estimation is pretty damn accurate and inclusive, giving a surprisingly truthful framework to look at it. Feel free to make a more useful model, it's definitely possible to do and will be done some day by someone. Using the SD framework it is always big picture and from there you have many ways to go deeper and many perspectives to approach from. As I've done that, I've noticed the SD framework holding its ground over and over again. It works great when you try to understand why societal stuff happen and why people do what they do - and as always, in a very big picture scale.

Most people only think about money, validation and prestige when doing career choices and they don’t see how it’s coming to bite them in the ass. You should work to get out of that prison of thinking about what others think, in the end that’s absolutely meaningless and it’s going to serve nobody, not even you. There are many aspects to consider. For example what kind of social environment is the profession most likely to put you in, what values are connected to the subject, what type of job opportunities does it open, how does the subject support your development? It’s wiser to get clear on the big lines and then let the process take you from there. Your understanding of sociology is most likely wrong and that’s because sociology can’t relly be defined one particular way. It really is a multidiciplinary field and when it’s done well, it becomes like magic. It really seeks to consider multiple perspectives in its truth-seeking efforts, which makes it one of the most truthful fields of science. There are so many different subfields and subsubfield that you would most likely not even study sociology per se, but find your own niche where you use your strengths and areas of interest. For example combining sociology with math and statistics is one valid option and it nicely amalgamates social topics with ”hard sciences”. I’ve also seen a Master’s program based on urban planning, where you put physics, biology and sociology together and you can select a study module that weights the subject you like the most. You need to make your own way and stop making your decisions based on what Ben Shapiro or anybody else says.

We don't advocate such irresponsible psychedelic usage here, nor should you.

That's very impressive. It must take plenty of courage and of course skill to pull that off in the limits of academic tolerance -- generally speaking. I've been to a lecture of this one very open-minded sociologist who constantly tried to take things to a deeper and more holistic sphere but clearly backed off as he noticed rolling eyes and received questions that he couldn't answer in a way that wouldn't make people roll their eyes even more. I put a little crumbs of outside the box thinking in my final essey and was glad to see that he recognized it in a positive way. I'm very curious how you actually do that. Wish I could attend those classes. I'm not a teacher, but I often try to open some of my relatively open-minded friends' minds and it's funny how I also need to present some ideas with such buzzwords just to lead them a bit deeper without compromising their openness. It's crazy how I can often feel the level of other persons' tolerance and sense how the level changes as I change the way I articulate. I hope to improve that skill for the future as I see myself doing teaching in one form or another. Interesting. Anchoring that to something familiar like Wim Hoff for example, could make people welcome it with less prejudice. I can only imagine how hard it might be to have that rare capability that you are restricted to use. I think it's also a special skill to understand that fact and hold back. Life keeps changing all the time and something that makes people's eyes roll today might be warmly welcomed in 10 years. Although for example Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were bold and ready to take risks, I still think they didn't have that skill, which is understandable as they couldn't quite anticipate how people will react and how their works would be framed as. Now we know better and know to be more careful. That's at the core of what I expected to hear (at best) when I originally asked you about integrating the two "sides" of life. Correct me if I'm wrong, but by what you've said it sound to me like that is the pinnacle or at least one of the sweetest fruits that have resulted from the integration of your career (the social mind) and your personal abilities and tendencies (the side of you alone in the forest). The fact that you bring your talent into an environment where it's not generally expected to be effective, leading to recognition of other people's hidden or suppressed talents, is astonishing to me. It's also soothing and inspiring to hear that there is room (or that room can be made) for deeper inquiry even in an academic setting. My university -- especially my faculty -- also has this strong marketing of multidisciplinarity. It's mostly like you described: there is a possibility to choose plenty of courses from many other faculties. Some teachers seem to be seriously trying to integrate that idea into their teaching, while the mass courses are still far from that. Anyway in the discipline I'm in there is this mutual understanding that we cannot come to any absolute truths or all-explaining explanations. In the research it is always emphasized how the output is only explaining a little part of the phenomenon while more truthful picture requires a broader range of perspectives and methods that need to be integrated together. That's what I really like.

Interesting. Do you think that phase of curiosity and psychedelics has somehow affected your ability (in good or bad) to relate to other people and be social in general?