ZenSwift

Member
  • Content count

    732
  • Joined

  • Last visited

About ZenSwift

  • Rank
    - - -

Personal Information

  • Location
    Canada
  • Gender
    Male

Recent Profile Visitors

3,482 profile views

Bookmarks

  1. Campfire Note Writing Software
    Great resource for writing/notes (Campfire)
    For your commonplace books,
    This is a great little writing tool for writing any kind of book, rpg, resources, or whatever writing you do.
    I've barley scratched the surface but there's a lot of potential; it's free to dabble in, looks fairly priced, and I feel that the people on this forum could do a lot with it. Leaving a link, give it a glance.
    https://www.campfirewriting.com/ 

  2. Inspirational Songs/Music
    Inspirational Songs/Music
    Post all your inspirational songs/music here.
    Any music/bands/singers/instrumentals etc, of any genre, culture, that makes gives you that flame of emotion and motivation.
    What's you're favourite music? Mine is Jukebox oldies, alternative rock, jazz, classical, indie rock. 
     
    THE MUSIC GENRE LIST - Let me know if there's anything missing!
    LIST OF TYPE OF MUSIC | MUSIC GENRES
    Alternative Art Punk Alternative Rock College Rock Crossover Thrash Crust Punk  Experimental Rock Folk Punk Goth / Gothic Rock Grunge Hardcore Punk Hard Rock Indie Rock Lo-fi  New Wave Progressive Rock Punk Shoegaze  Steampunk  Anime Blues Acoustic Blues Chicago Blues Classic Blues Contemporary Blues Country Blues Delta Blues Electric Blues Ragtime Blues  Children’s Music Lullabies Sing-Along Stories Classical Avant-Garde Baroque Chamber Music Chant Choral Classical Crossover Contemporary Classical  Early Music Expressionist High Classical Impressionist Medieval Minimalism Modern Composition Opera Orchestral Renaissance Romantic (early period) Romantic (later period) Wedding Music Comedy Novelty Standup Comedy Vaudeville  Commercial  Jingles TV Themes Country Alternative Country Americana Bluegrass Contemporary Bluegrass Contemporary Country Country Gospel Country Pop  Honky Tonk Outlaw Country Traditional Bluegrass Traditional Country Urban Cowboy Dance (EDM – Electronic Dance Music  Club / Club Dance  Breakcore Breakbeat / Breakstep Brostep  Chillstep  Deep House  Dubstep Electro House Electroswing Exercise Future Garage Garage Glitch Hop  Glitch Pop  Grime  Hardcore Hard Dance Hi-NRG / Eurodance Horrorcore  House Jackin House  Jungle / Drum’n’bass Liquid Dub Regstep  Speedcore  Techno Trance Trap  Disney Easy Listening Bop Lounge Swing Electronic 2-Step 8bit – aka 8-bit, Bitpop and Chiptune  Ambient Bassline  Chillwave Chiptune  Crunk  Downtempo Drum & Bass  Electro Electro-swing  Electronica Electronic Rock Hardstyle  IDM/Experimental Industrial Trip Hop Enka French Pop German Folk German Pop Fitness & Workout Hip-Hop/Rap Alternative Rap Bounce Dirty South East Coast Rap Gangsta Rap Hardcore Rap Hip-Hop Latin Rap Old School Rap Rap Turntablism  Underground Rap West Coast Rap Holiday Chanukah Christmas Christmas: Children’s Christmas: Classic Christmas: Classical Christmas: Comedy Christmas: Jazz Christmas: Modern Christmas: Pop Christmas: R&B Christmas: Religious Christmas: Rock Easter Halloween Holiday: Other Thanksgiving Indie Pop Industrial Inspirational – Christian & Gospel CCM Christian Metal Christian Pop Christian Rap Christian Rock Classic Christian Contemporary Gospel Gospel Christian & Gospel Praise & Worship Qawwali  Southern Gospel Traditional Gospel Instrumental March  J-Pop J-Rock J-Synth J-Ska J-Punk Jazz Acid Jazz  Avant-Garde Jazz Bebop  Big Band Blue Note  Contemporary Jazz Cool Crossover Jazz Dixieland Ethio-jazz  Fusion Gypsy Jazz  Hard Bop Latin Jazz Mainstream Jazz Ragtime Smooth Jazz Trad Jazz Jukebox Oldies K-Pop Karaoke Kayokyoku Latin Alternativo & Rock Latino Argentine tango  Baladas y Boleros Bossa Nova  Brazilian Contemporary Latin Cumbia  Flamenco / Spanish Flamenco Latin Jazz Nuevo Flamenco  Pop Latino Portuguese fado  Raíces Reggaeton y Hip-Hop Regional Mexicano Salsa y Tropical Nature Music New Age Environmental Healing Meditation Nature Relaxation Travel Opera Pop Adult Contemporary Britpop Bubblegum Pop  Chamber Pop Dance Pop Dream Pop  Electro Pop Orchestral Pop Pop/Rock Pop Punk Power Pop Soft Rock Synthpop Teen Pop R&B/Soul Contemporary R&B Disco  Doo Wop Funk Modern Soul  Motown Neo-Soul Northern Soul  Psychedelic Soul  Quiet Storm Soul Soul Blues  Southern Soul Reggae 2-Tone  Dancehall Dub Roots Reggae Ska Rock Acid Rock Adult-Oriented Rock  Afro Punk Adult Alternative Alternative Rock American Trad Rock Anatolian Rock Arena Rock Art Rock Blues-Rock British Invasion Cock Rock Death Metal / Black Metal Doom Metal  Glam Rock Gothic Metal  Grind Core Hair Metal Hard Rock Math Metal  Math Rock  Metal Metal Core  Noise Rock Jam Bands Post Punk  Prog-Rock/Art Rock Progressive Metal Psychedelic Rock & Roll Rockabilly  Roots Rock Singer/Songwriter Southern Rock Spazzcore Stoner Metal  Surf Technical Death Metal  Tex-Mex Time Lord Rock (Trock)  Trash Metal Singer/Songwriter Alternative Folk Contemporary Folk Contemporary Singer/Songwriter Indie Folk  Folk-Rock Love Song  New Acoustic Traditional Folk Soundtrack Foreign Cinema Movie Soundtrack  Musicals Original Score Soundtrack TV Soundtrack Spoken Word Tex-Mex / Tejano  Chicano Classic Conjunto Conjunto Progressive New Mex Tex-Mex Vocal A cappella  Barbershop  Doo-wop  Gregorian Chant  Standards Traditional Pop Vocal Jazz Vocal Pop World Africa Afro-Beat Afro-Pop Asia Australia Cajun Calypso  Caribbean Carnatic  Celtic Celtic Folk Contemporary Celtic Coupé-décalé  Dangdut  Drinking Songs Drone  Europe France Hawaii Hindustani  Indian Ghazal Indian Pop Japan Japanese Pop Klezmer Mbalax  Middle East North America Ode  Piphat  Polka Soca  South Africa South America Traditional Celtic Worldbeat Zydeco Different types of music genres
    2009-2016 Music Genres List

  3. Kriya Yoga Mega-Thread
    Kriya Yoga Mega-Thread
    People seem to be getting into Kriya Yoga after my video, and lots of questions are coming up, so I thought it would be best to accumulate them all in one place.
    Post all your Kriya Yoga questions and tips here.
    Over time this should become a valuable resource for people. Similar to our monstrously large 5-MeO-DMT Mega-Thread.
    Feel free to share your advice, tricks, and progress reports. If we have a lot people doing Kriya, it would be cool to see how many people start experiencing gains and mystical experiences, and how quickly. It would be awesome if we had like 100 people post a progress report after 3, 6, and 12 months of practice. In the name of pseudo-science

  4. MMO Server Runs all the Players
    All you solipsists, including Leo, need to watch this
    It doesn't make sense to you because you are interpreting what I say from a dualistic paradigm which assumes a self/other distinction. You are projecting your delusion of duality onto what I say.
    I am conscious that other users on here are simply projections of a universal mind. You are not conscious of this. So when I speak to others, I know am just speaking to myself, but you do not know that because your ego is in the way. Your ego will not even allow you to imagine what it would be like to realize that the self/other distinction is unreal.
    No matter who I address I am addressing you and I am addressing myself because you, me, and all beings are ONE!
    Everyone is the only being in the universe. It's like a massively multiplayer online game where one central server runs all the players. God's mind has fractured itself into a trillion pieces. Or it imagines it has. In truth, nothing is fractured because the distinction between fractured vs whole must itself collapse, leaving behind Absolute Unity. A Unity which has no opposite. The human mind cannot imagine such a Unity because it is too total to allow for a finite mind to exist in it. Within this Absolute Unity there is no difference between your human body, a chair, a kangaroo, a taco, or anything else. All of it blends into ONE. This is the Godhead. This is what you were before you were born as a human self.

  5. What is Systems thinking?
    What is Systems thinking?
    (These are just my thoughts, not an official representation of any authority on the matter. Some of the terms presented here use my own idiosyncratic definitions and may have different meanings elsewhere. It's also not at all a comprehensive view on the topic but only a rough summary based on my limited understanding.)
     
    I've spent the past year or so really trying to wrap my head around the essence of Tier 2 cognition (starting at Yellow), namely systems thinking. Just these past 6 months, after taking some courses in communication theory and community psychology, I've gotten some insights into the matter that really solidified my previous intuitions which I'd like to share here. I was truly surprised of how much these two fields were based on systems theory (mainly the theories of Gregory Bateson and Urie Bronfenbrenner respectively, although these two theorists only serve as lightning rods for the vast meta-theoretical space that is systems thinking).

    I'll open up with a quote from each of the aforementioned theorists:

    What these quotes have in common is that they emphasize relationships or interconnections. That is what a system is: a collection of relationships. But isn't it the case that anybody can understand concepts such as "relationships", "interconnections" and "systems"? What makes systems thinking so special? Now, you could actually argue that systems thinking itself isn't necessarily confined to Tier 2. However, I'll say that Tier 2 cognition consists of something called a "mature systems view." It's about a way to view the world; a worldview, and it's of a certain sophistication or maturity. To truly understand this worldview, we must first contrast it with a more common worldview, which I will call "analytical thinking."
     
    Analytical thinking

    Fritjof Capra, a pillar of the mature systems view, refers to this worldview and way of thinking as the "Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm." It's characterized by reductionism, mechanism, atomism and positivism. The Cartesian method approaches understanding the world by breaking it down into smaller components (reductionism). Newtonian mechanics describes the world as force interactions between physical objects that consist of atoms (mechanism, atomism). Positivism refers to the idea that we can formulate consistent laws based on this type of knowledge (e.g. "laws of physics").

    Another way to think about it is that analytical thinking approaches the world "vertically":


    This vertical approach isn't just confined to the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, biology). It's also central to fields like psychology. The analytical tradition of psychology reduces problems down to components within the individual: symptoms, diagnoses, traits, drives, genes, beliefs, values etc. It lays the basis for individual psychotherapy (psychoanalysis, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy etc.), psychiatric medical treatment (antidepressants, anxiolytics etc.), personality psychology (Big 5, MBTI etc.), cognitive psychology (e.g. Beck's schema theory) etc. Jordan Peterson is a big proponent of this view.

    On the other hand, there is a systemic tradition within psychology called community psychology. It emphasizes relationships, connections and environmental factors when solving problems (social, economic, political, cultural etc.). Not coincidentally, Jordan Peterson is not a big fan of this approach. Without making this any more about our beloved JP, let's get straight to it: what is systems thinking?
     
    Systems thinking

    In contrast to reductionism, mechanism, atomism and positivism, systems thinking is relational, holistic, ecological and organic. 

    A system is a collection of relationships between units, and holism is about focusing on the whole. Taking a systems view is about seeing the interplay as a whole, not just the individual units for themselves. The bigger the system view, the greater and more inclusive the whole becomes, and the more holistic it becomes. Ecology is about understanding the relationships between organisms and their environment, and an organism is an interplay of smaller living units ("organs" or organic units). Systems in nature and society are complex and can be described using different concepts from systems theory (e.g. "transaction", "self-organization", "adaptation", "feedback" etc.).

    In contrast to the vertical nature of analytical thinking, systems thinking is "horizontal":

     
    This picture represents a social system, however the horizontal principle applies to other systems as well: organ systems, cells, molecules, atoms etc.). These are «real systems» (natural/social systems). You also have abstract systems (e.g. scientific theories, ideologies, value systems, meta-systems, paradigms, meta-theories etc.), and that's where things like construct awareness come into play (more on that later).

    Meta-theories are "theories about theories", which try to understand how abstract systems work through meta-systematic observations. Fields like philosophy of science and models like Spiral Dynamics and Integral theory are examples of such meta-theories. Model of hierarchical complexity (MHC) is a good model to understand the different levels of abstract systems (e.g. "how complex is a paradigm?").
     
    Context awareness, Construct awareness and Theory pluralism.
    I've already mentioned construct awareness, which is one of three main facets that I think are useful to further understand systems thinking:

     
    Context awareness refers to the general ability to understand the pervasive nature of relationships in the world: the vast array of relationships across different domains (physical, biological, social etc.). Any individual unit exists within a larger context (their environment or the larger system), and being aware of context is synonymous with a general form of system awareness.

    Bronfenbrenner's Ecological systems theory is a good illustration of context awareness:

     
    Construct awareness is the ability to the understand the relationship between the human and the world with respect to making sense of the world (knowledge, sensemaking and epistemology) and how it's a process of constructing abstract systems. People may manipulate these abstract systems without understanding how they work, e.g. what kind of system it is, how it's made, and how it relates to other systems, which would be an exercise in construct blindness. For example, it's possible to operate a car without knowing how it was made or how the engine works. To not be aware of how abstract systems work to construct your reality is to have a lack of construct awareness.

    Thomas Kuhn and his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is a good example of construct awareness. After performing a meta-theoretical study on the historical development of science, he concluded that all scientific theories at all times are validated relative to a historically contingent framework of philosophical assumptions (a paradigm, a collection of constructs), and thus all scientific knowledge is fundamentally relational in nature. So not only are the external aspects of human behavior dependent on context (as in social interactions; Bronfenbrenner), but also the internal aspects (mind). If we go back to Gregory Bateson, in his systemic communication theory, he in fact defines "context" not as something external, but as an internal psychological framework. He does this because of the insight that the mind is constructing the external world. Alfred Korzybski's "the map is not the territory" is also a staple of construct awareness.
     
    With enough context and construct awareness, you'll inevitably end up with theory pluralism: the ability to explore and understand a wide range of different abstract systems (theoretical frameworks). In a sense, theory pluralism is both a prerequisite and a consequence of construct awareness (they're co-created). However, to really develop a wide knowledge of theory, you must have a deep meta-theoretical understanding which is able to see the larger picture – the essence of construct awareness. Ken Wilber is a great ambassador for theory pluralism. His vision of integrating all domains of knowledge into a single, comprehensive framework is the pinnacle of systems thinking. Fritjof Capra should also be mentioned here with his book "the Tao of Physics", where he not only makes profound observations about context and construct in his writings about Quantum Mechanics, but he also makes theoretical comparisons to Taoism and non-duality.
     
    I mentioned earlier regarding having a "mature systems view" that systems thinking is not necessarily confined to Tier 2 cognition. This is because Green is very open to context awareness and will easily appreciate models like Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory. What Green struggles with the most is construct awareness. It might be able to deconstruct a lot of Orange systems, both from a rational place and an intuitive place, but it struggles to pick up the pieces, both theoretically and practically. Construct awareness also makes you more prone to grasping the concepts in systems theory, which unlocks key concepts like the meta-theoretical evolutionary lens (Beck & Cowan, Wilber, Kuhn), which Green crucially lacks.
     
    So that is the gist of it, but there is so much more I could talk about, e.g. the history of systems theory (deep ecology, cybernetics, Gestalt psychology etc.) and different systems theory concepts like I've alluded to earlier. There are also other aspects of Tier 2 cognition that could be expanded upon, like the ability to hold paradox, understanding holarchies, or different real-life applications (that's a big one). I would anyways like to hear what you guys have discovered about systems thinking that I've left out. I would never turn down the opportunity to deepen my theory pluralism  
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Additional notes and clarifications:
    Expanding on this:
     
    Analytical thinking and systems thinking must not be thought of as diametrical opposites, but as generally expressing different dimensions of movement through abstract systems (vertical vs. horizontal). Neither of them are pure expressions of either "vertical" or "horizontal" thinking, because technically all abstract thought utilizes both dimensions to navigate the cognitive landscape. An alternative description could be hierarchical movement vs. cross-hierarchical movement. The categories explored in hierarchical movement tend to have a corresponding familiarity or similarity of kind, while the ones in cross-hierarchical movement have corresponding distance or diversity of kind (in that it's possible to have many qualitatively very different things interacting with each other in a system).
     
    One reason why horizontal movement tends to be more readily associated with complexity might be due to the relative simplicity of postulating it abstractly, because meanwhile it's possible to have interactions between many qualitatively different things, it doesn't actually necessitate or force a qualitative difference (e.g. you can simply have interactions between many molecules of the same kind), meanwhile a comparably complex vertical scenario is much harder to postulate, as the different levels of a hierarchy always forces a degree of difference (e.g. molecule > atom > sub-atomic), and thus most abstract hierarchies tend to be simpler (because models are supposed to simplify). In other words, the tendency towards horizontal complexity could simply be a bias of abstraction, and that in reality, systems are equally infinitely complex across all dimensions, both vertically and horizontally. Thinking is nevertheless about abstraction, and therefore horizontal thinking serves as a litmus test for complex thinking.
     
    So from this alternative view, what is systems thinking? Well, the more you refine your general ability to abstract both vertically and horizontally across categories (symbols, concepts, classes and domains), the more expansive and complex your thinking becomes. Therefore, the proclivity towards the mature systems view simply depends on the size and complexity of one's perspective. Horizontal thinking is nevertheless generally an indicator of complex thinking.

  6. Systems thinkers
    Systems thinkers
    Quickly made a rough overview over some different systems thinkers and the circles they're associated with. A lot of it is interconnected somehow  (click on the picture if you have trouble reading):

    I tried to add just enough people to make a decent representation of each category and limited green arrows to across categories (I figured it's easy to make it into a mess). The direction of the arrows denotes the place from which someone or something draws inspiration or is affiliated with in a subordinate sense. For example, many people draw inspiration from or are somehow associated with Game B, and Game B draws inspiration from fields like Deep ecology. You can help me find more categories and people to add under them if you'd like  
     

  7. Systems Thinking
    Systems Theory: The Most Accurate Rational Understanding of Spirituality & Life
    A Zen Master lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain.
    One evening, while he was away, a thief sneaked into the hut only to find there was nothing in it to steal. The Zen Master returned and found him.
    “You have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.” 
    The thief was bewildered, but he took the clothes and ran away. He thought:
    'What a buffoon. At least, I got away with these clothes.'
    The Master sat naked, watching the moon.
    “Poor fellow,” he mused, ” I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”
    -----
    A solid understanding of systems theory + a practical spiritual integration of its primary principles is essential for the investigation of truth. In fact, for a life dedicated to greater understanding, fulfillment and happiness at the deepest level.
    As you view reality through the lens of systems theory, you'll see avenues you have yet to explore in your spiritual journey. It is a forever open feedback channel that is left within the system until your last breath.
    Spoiler Alert: Your entire mind/body system and reality structure is expressed within the core principles of systems theory.
    Here are some of my explorations and studies into systems theory.
    The Essence of Systems Theory
    1- Understand the Key Harmony of the System
    Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves.
    If it’s a piece of music or a whitewater rapid or a fluctuation in a commodity price, study its beat. If it’s a social system, watch it work. Learn its history. Ask people who’ve been around a long time to tell you what has happened. 
    This guideline is deceptively simple. Until you make it a practice, you won’t believe how many wrong turns it helps you avoid. Starting with the behavior of the system forces you to focus on facts, not theories. It keeps you from falling too quickly into your own beliefs or misconceptions, or those of others.
    It’s amazing how many misconceptions there can be. People will swear that rainfall is decreasing, say, but when you look at the data, you find that what is really happening is that variability is increasing—the droughts are deeper, but the floods are greater too.
    It’s especially interesting to watch how the various elements in the system do or do not vary together. Watching what really happens, instead of listening to peoples’ theories of what happens, can explode many careless causal hypotheses.
    Every selectman in the state of New Hampshire seems to be positive that growth in a town will lower taxes, but if you plot growth rates against tax rates, you find a scatter as random as the stars in a New Hampshire winter sky. There is no discernible relationship at all.
    Starting with the behavior of the system directs one’s thoughts to dynamic, not static, analysis—not only to “What’s wrong?” but also to “How did we get there?” “What other behavior modes are possible?” “If we don’t change direction, where are we going to end up?”
    And looking to the strengths of the system, one can ask “What’s working well here?”
    Starting with the history of several variables plotted together begins to suggest not only what elements are in the system, but how they might be interconnected.
    And finally, starting with history discourages the common and distracting tendency we all have to define a problem not by the system’s actual behavior, but by the lack of our favorite solution.  - The problem is, we need to find more oil. The problem is, we need to ban abortion. The problem is, we don’t have enough salesmen. The problem is, how can we attract more growth to this town?
    Listen to any discussion, in your family or a committee meeting at work or among the pundits in the media, and watch people leap to solutions, usually solutions in “predict, control, or impose your will” mode, without having paid any attention to what the system is doing and why it’s doing it.
    2- Explore Your Mental Models Clearly (After Direct Experience)
    When we draw structural diagrams and then write equations, we are forced to make our assumptions visible and to express them with rigor. We have to put every one of our assumptions about the system out where others (and we ourselves) can see them.
    Our models have to be complete, and they have to add up, and they have to be consistent. Our assumptions can no longer slide around (mental models are very slippery), assuming one thing for purposes of one discussion and something else contradictory for purposes of the next discussion.
    You don’t have to put forth your mental model with diagrams and equations, although doing so is a good practice. The more you do that, in any form, the clearer your thinking will become, the faster you will admit your uncertainties and correct your mistakes, and the more flexible you will learn to be.
    Mental flexibility—the willingness to redraw boundaries, to notice that a system has shifted into a new mode, to see how to redesign structure—is a necessity when you live in a world of flexible systems.
    3- Respect Data & Information Channels
    Information (both conceptual and non-conceptual) holds systems in harmony whereas delayed, biased, scattered, corrupted or missing data can make feedback loops malfunction.
    For instance, decision makers can’t respond to information they don’t have, can’t respond accurately to information that is inaccurate, and can’t respond in a timely way to information that is late. I would guess that most of what goes wrong in systems goes wrong because of biased, late, or missing information.
    If I could, I would add an eleventh commandment to the first ten: Thou shalt not distort, delay, or withhold information.
    You can drive a system crazy by muddying its information streams. You can make a system work better with surprising ease if you can give it more timely, more accurate, more complete information.
    4 - Attend to What is Important, Not What is Immediately Perceivable and Quantifiable
    Our culture, obsessed with numbers, has given us the idea that what we can measure is more important than what we can’t measure. Think about that for a minute. It means that we make quantity more important than quality. 
    If quantity forms the goals of our feedback loops, if quantity is the center of our attention and language and institutions, if we motivate ourselves, rate ourselves, and reward ourselves on our ability to produce quantity, then quantity will be the result.
    You can look around and make up your own mind about whether quantity or quality is the outstanding characteristic of the world in which you live.
    Pretending that something doesn’t exist if it’s hard to quantify leads to faulty models. You’ve already seen the system trap that comes from setting goals around what is easily measured, rather than around what is important.
    So don’t fall into that trap. Human beings have been endowed not only with the ability to count, but also with the ability to assess quality.
    Be a quality detector. Be a walking, noisy Geiger counter that registers the presence or absence of quality.
    No one can quite define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value.
    But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t directly experience and radiate them, if we dont point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist within the social reality the system is based on.
    5- Generate Feedback Policies Within Feedback Loops
    President Jimmy Carter had an unusual ability to think in feedback terms and to make feedback policies. Unfortunately, he had a hard time explaining them to a press and public that didn’t understand feedback. Let me explain:
    Carter was trying to deal with a flood of illegal immigrants from Mexico. He suggested that nothing could be done about that immigration as long as there was a great gap in opportunity and living standards between the United States and Mexico. Rather than spending money on border guards and barriers, he said, we should spend money helping to build the Mexican economy, and we should continue to do so until the immigration stopped.
    That never happened. This is a failure of feedback policy.
    You can imagine why a dynamic, self-adjusting feedback system cannot be governed by a static, unbending policy.
    It’s easier, more effective, and usually much cheaper to design policies that change depending on the state of the system.
    Especially where there are great uncertainties, the best policies not only contain feedback loops, but meta-feedback loops—loops that alter, correct, and expand loops. These are policies that design learning into the management process.
    6- Value the Good of the Whole
    Remember that hierarchies exist to serve the bottom layers, not the top.
    Don’t maximize parts of systems or subsystems while ignoring the whole. Don’t, as Kenneth Boulding once said, go to great trouble to optimize something that never should be done at all.
    Aim to enhance total systems properties, such as growth, stability, diversity, resilience, and sustainability—whether they are easily measured or not.
    7- Listen to the Wisdom of the System
    Aid and encourage the forces and structures that help the system run itself.
    Notice how many of those forces and structures are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Don’t be an unthinking intervenor and destroy the system’s own self-maintenance capacities.
    Before you charge in to make things better, pay attention to the value of what’s already there.
    Get a feel for what to play with and what to allow its maturation process to unfold at its own pace.
    8- Locate Responsibility Within the System & Open its Feedback Channels
    That’s a guideline both for analysis and design. In analysis, it means looking for the ways the system creates its own behavior.
    Do pay attention to the triggering events, the outside influences that bring forth one kind of behavior from the system rather than another. Sometimes those outside events can be controlled (as in reducing the pathogens in drinking water to keep down incidences of infectious disease). But sometimes they can’t.
    You need to accept that.
    And sometimes blaming or trying to control the outside influence blinds one to the easier task of increasing responsibility within the system.
    “Intrinsic responsibility” means that the system is designed to send feedback about the consequences of decision making directly and quickly and compellingly to the decision makers.
    In a sense, the pilot of a plane rides in the front of the plane, that pilot is intrinsically responsible. He or she will experience directly the consequences of his or her decisions.
    Designing a system for intrinsic responsibility could mean, for example, requiring all towns or companies that emit wastewater into a stream to place their intake pipes downstream from their outflow pipe. It could mean that neither insurance companies nor public funds should pay for medical costs resulting from smoking or from accidents in which a motorcycle rider didn’t wear a helmet or a car rider didn’t fasten the seat belt
    A great deal of responsibility was lost when rulers of a nation who declared war were no longer expected to lead the troops into battle. 
    These few examples are enough to get you thinking about how little our current culture has come to look for responsibility within the system that generates an action, and how poorly we design systems to experience the consequences of their actions.
    9- Always Stay a Student
    Systems thinking has taught me to trust my intuition more and my figuring- out rationality less, to lean on both as much as I can, but still to be prepared for surprises.
    Working with systems, on the computer, in nature, among people, in organizations, constantly reminds me of how incomplete my mental models are, how complex the world is, and how much I don’t know.
    That’s hard. It means making mistakes and, worse, admitting them. It means what psychologist Don Michael calls “error-embracing.” It takes a lot of courage to embrace your errors
    10- Embrace Complexity
    Let’s face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity and uniformity.
    That’s what makes the world interesting, and that’s what makes it beautiful.
    There’s something within the human mind that is attracted to straight lines and not curves, to whole numbers and not fractions, to uniformity and not diversity, and to certainties and not mystery.
    But there is something else within us that has the opposite set of tendencies, since we ourselves evolved out of and are shaped by and structured as complex feedback systems.
    Only a part of us, a part that has emerged recently, designs buildings as boxes with uncompromising straight lines and flat surfaces.
    Another part of us recognizes instinctively that nature designs in fractals, with intriguing detail on every scale from the microscopic to the macroscopic. That part of us makes Gothic cathedrals and Persian carpets, symphonies and novels, Mardi Gras costumes and artificial intelligence programs, all with embellishments almost as complex as the ones we find in the world around us.
    We can, and some of us do, celebrate and encourage self-organization, disorder, variety, and diversity. Some of us even make a conscious moral commitment of doing so.
    11- Expand the Time Axiom
    One of the worst ideas humanity ever had was the interest rate, which led to the further ideas of payback periods and discount rates, all of which provide a rational, quantitative excuse for ignoring the long term.
    The official time horizon of industrial society doesn’t extend beyond what will happen after the next election or beyond the payback period of current investments.
    Don't make the same mistake.
    In a strict systems sense, there is no long term and short-term distinction.
    Phenomena at different time-scales are nested within each other.
    Actions taken now have some immediate effects and some that radiate out for decades to come. We experience now the consequences of actions set in motion yesterday and decades ago and centuries ago.
    The couplings between very fast processes and very slow ones are sometimes strong, sometimes weak. When the slow ones dominate, nothing seems to be happening; when the fast ones take over, things happen with breathtaking speed.
    Systems are always coupling and uncoupling the large and the small, the fast and the slow.
    When you’re walking along a tricky, curving, unknown, surprising, obstacle-strewn path, you’d be a fool to keep your head down and look just at the next step in front of you. You’d be equally a fool just to peer far ahead and never notice what’s immediately under your feet.
    You need to be watching both the short and the long term—the whole system.
    12 - Defy the Disciplines
    In spite of what you majored in, or what the textbooks say, or what you think you’re an expert at, follow a system wherever it leads. It will be sure to lead across traditional disciplinary lines.
    To understand that system, you will have to be able to learn from—while not being limited by—economists and chemists and psychologists and theologians.
    You will have to penetrate their jargons, integrate what they tell you, recognize what they can honestly see through their particular lenses, and discard the distortions that come from the narrowness and incompleteness of their lenses.
    They won’t make it easy for you. But you can do it.
    Seeing systems whole requires more than being “interdisciplinary,” if that word means, as it usually does, putting together people from different disciplines and letting them talk past each other.
    Interdisciplinary communication works only if there is a real problem to be solved, and if the representatives from the various disciplines are more committed to solving the problem than to being academically correct.
    They will have to go into learning mode. They will have to admit ignorance and be willing to be taught, by each other and by the system.
    It can be done. But, ego gets in the way if not careful.
    13- Expand the Boundary of Care - Empathy - Compassion - Love
    Living successfully in a world of complex systems means expanding not only time horizons and thought horizons; above all, it means expanding the horizons of caring.
    There are moral reasons for doing that, of course. And if moral arguments are not sufficient, then systems thinking provides the practical reasons to back up the moral ones.
    The real system is interconnected. No part of the human race is separate either from other human beings or from the global ecosystem.
    It will not be possible in this integrated world for your heart to succeed if your lungs fail, or for your company to succeed if your workers fail, or for the rich in Los Angeles to succeed if the poor in Los Angeles fail, or for Europe to succeed if Africa fails, or for the global economy to succeed if the global environment fails.
    As with everything else about systems, most people already know about the interconnections that make moral and practical rules turn out to be the same rules. They just have to bring themselves to experience that which they know.
    ---
    Hope you get value from this post. 
    Let me know your thoughts.
    Much love,
    Arda
     

  8. Commonplace Book Mega Thread
    Commonplace Book Mega Thread
    Firstly, I want to thank @Leo Gura once again for this amazing content. I am talking about his newest video - How To Keep The Ultimate Journal (Commonplace Book). Who have not checked it out yet, go and listen to it very diligently and in details. In short the commonplace book is something like personalized Wikipedia. You build it with information relevant to you and with time It becomes your personal treasury of knowledge. I believe that applying this practice on a daily basis could transform your entire life in the long run! It could boost your creativity and productivity indefinitely!
    Discuss here the tips and ideas concerning the Commonplace Book.  Ask questions or recommendations for how to set up your Commonplace Book effectively. Discuss alternative software to OneNote - this is the one Leo is currently using. Highly recommended to watch it with great attention!
     

  9. Recognition that others are you = Love
    Love of "others"
    i had a small epiphany the other day relating to romantic love:

    The recognition that others are you = love. Thus, the extent to which you recognise yourself in "others" is the same thing as your love for them. Think about any time you've ever felt a true love-connection with anyone.
    It's literally all self-love. The more awake you are, the more of yourself you will see.

    This may seem obvious to some of you, but I think it's worth a thought next time you're pondering your relationship.

  10. Enlightenment One-liners
    Enlightenment One-liners
    Encorporating simple, and often mysterious, one-liners is what I noticed recently has helped me to change my state of experience, when I can really incorporate them. Do you have some favorite simple oneliners you could share that bring enlightenment?

  11. The 5-MeO-DMT Mega-Thread
    The 5-MeO-DMT Mega-Thread
    User @outlandish suggested we start a 5-meo mega-thread, as people seem to have lots of general questions about it.
    You can still create your own individual threads about 5-meo, and trip reports shouldn't be posted in this thread, but otherwise, consider this the place for general 5-meo discussion.
    Here's a link to Erowid's 5-MeO-DMT Vault, which has a lot of basic information.
    Note: Do not ask questions here about how to source psychedelics. That is against our Forum Guidelines, so it will be deleted.

  12. How to Speak Like Leo
    Leo: Did you develop your speaking skills?
    Noted. 

  13. Heavy Metal Detox 2
    Heavy Metal Detox
    I have been doing research on this since Leo has been mentioning. It's pretty staggering how unknown this is, it could be someones' sole reason for depression/anxiety no matter what else they do to try and help it.

    Seems like the best way to detox is by fasting and eating certain food, also doing saunas.

    But are there any products or procedures that rapidly increase this process? 

    Any recs? 

  14. Heavy Metal Detox
    Heavy metal detox -- Deep info on proper chelation -- Convinced by user to post this
    I've said things on it enough times. Leo can do the rest. There's nothing else I know that I haven't posted/commented here.
    Copied and pasted comments are in between the ----------'s. The rest is additional information.
    Disclaimer: ALA referred to here is not the omega 3 fatty acid, alpha linolenic acid. It’s alpha lipoic acid. AKA thioctic acid. I don’t have any experience with chelators besides ALA and DMSA, but DMPS certainly seems to have merit as well. ALA must be taken no less frequently than every 3 hours, and DMSA must be taken no less frequently than every 4 hours (i.e. e3h is even better) — both must be taken at this frequency for at least 72 hours straight, otherwise the chelation round was not only unsuccessful...you may have just damaged your body and likely your brain. Anything other than these 3 chelators, zeolite, and in rare cases, EDTA, for chelation, is dangerous and anyone advocating it has no clue how chelators work. The double thiol group acts as a loose but effective hook of sorts — a lone thiol group will just spread metals around haphazardly (possibly causing damage and stress), without latching onto them and actually taking them out of the body. ALA, DMSA, and DMPS are double thiol chelators that are safe when used correctly.
    Andy Cutler’s writings, and his posts and wikis on onibasu are where you go for further info.
    ----------
    I didn't feel anything off 600mg ALA + 100mg DMSA e3h for 30+ day rounds, fwiw.
    I mean, I didn't get side-effects. The brain fog and fatigue went away.
    And ALA only affects mercury (and arsenic, which is not as big of a deal). DMSA chelates lead and mercury.
     
    Btw 64 hours is too short. That's cutting it way too close -- healing/damage ratio is positive by the 72 hour mark for adults, and maybe 60 hours for small children, but you might as well get the ratio as high as possible... Aim for 96+ hours; preferably 7-14+ days. The longer the better, provided you keep copper under control. You CANNOT take ALA for long cycles without zinc (and preferably molybdenum too) 4x/d, or you will be profoundly overloaded with copper.
    ---------
    It is very, very risky, unless you do it right. It cured my chronic fatigue but I did it all-in, hardcore style. 6 month cycle with only a few 3-7 day breaks. With every ancillary carefully selected for copper-toxicity control, alarms so I'd never miss a dose, etc. I never had amalgam but by God there must've been something in my body because damn it worked.
     
    I dosed ALA and DMSA every 3 hours around the clock for months on end. Started at low doses and worked up to 600mg ALA / 100mg DMSA e3h. Falling blood levels cause redistribution, so the key is to not let them fall, ever, until you inevitably have to go off -- at which point there will be damage, but the goal is to have the healing net-outweigh the damage. Break-even healing/damage ratio is achieved between hours 60 and 72 of a cycle. Once you make it that long, you know you've succeeded for that round, and you should continue to milk it as long as you can handle to get that ratio up. Thus, long rounds/cycles are much more effective, but harder to deal with side-effect wise... and it carries the risk of oxidative stress from the DMSA, and copper toxicity from the ALA (avoid eating nuts while on ALA). I didn't really have side-effects. As soon as you miss a dose, that round is over, you need to take a break, and if the missed dose occurred before hour 72, the cycle was basically not successful.
    It can be especially helpful if you have anything significantly greater than perfectly healthy amounts of mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, and even iron in your system. The copper overload induced by the ALA very effectively purges iron from the body -- something that may be quite helpful if one has eaten a lot of iron-fortified foods in their life.
    The reason chelation studies haven't shown much in the way of curing chronic fatigue is simply because they dosed every 8 hours. DMSA must be dosed every 4 (or less) hours to prevent falling levels, which alone is responsible for the redistribution damage and prevents the healing/damage ratio from being a positive number.
    ----------
    You can get it done a lot faster if you do long rounds. Let me explain...
    The minimum round-length is 72 hours in order to be reasonably certain that the healing/damage ratio is a positive number. The longer the round, the higher that number. Falling systemic levels of the double-thiol chelator are what cause redistribution, which is why you have to take the chelator so frequently, and why longer rounds are far more efficient -- your levels don't fall until the very end of each round, when you stop taking it, therefore you should minimize the amount of times you have to do this, via going as long as you can handle. The only reason not to do them for long stretches is an inability to handle it.
    A 3-4 day round and a 3-4 day break every week will clean out sufficient mercury/lead within 2-5 years (closer to 1-2 years if you did 1-2 weeks on / 1-2 weeks off) -- the same thing can be achieved with one 6-month round, though you shouldn't actually do it that long. I basically intended to do one 6-month round but there were a few 5-7 day breaks (each initiated upon accidentally missing a dose) so it ended up being essentially three 2-month rounds, in the end -- that's all it took. I recommend planning on a 6 month round and just taking a 7-14 day break each and every time you inevitably accidentally miss a dose.
    And btw, each 50% increase in dose results in an 18% faster rate of mercury excretion... Since taking larger doses results in comparatively less redistribution, taking larger doses (ramp up as you can handle) will not only speed the process up a bit, it may also have a bit of a buffer effect, protecting you from times when you miss a dose by 30-60min, which should rarely happen, nonetheless. For the majority of my largely-uninterrupted 6-month cycle, I was taking 600mg ALA and 100mg DMSA every 3 hours.
    -------------
    E.g. If you take 100mg ALA every 3 hours for 72 hours running, that would be a 3-day (72 hour) round (or cycle), which is the absolute minimum length the round must be, since you damage yourself every time you come off, but damage while on-cycle (on-round) is minimal -- it's almost all heavy metal excretion (no redistribution) while on-round. The break even healing/damage point occurs after 60-72 hours (of consistently taking the chelator every 3 hours), so it would be to your benefit to do rounds much longer than this. The fastest route would be a 6 month round, but I don't think that's ever been done and it's not advised. I essentially did three 2-month rounds with a 1-week break between each.
    Doing it for long stretches at a time significantly decreases the total amount of time you'll have to spend on-round before you clear out all the heavy metals you need to. However, copper toxicity can be a problem with ALA, so you'll need to take both zinc and molybdenum 4x/day -- twice a day is insufficient. Even taking 7.5mg zinc and 250mcg molybdenum (the appropriate amounts) 4x a day each will not stave off copper toxicity forever. And oxidative stress can be an issue with DMSA so you have to take antioxidants.
    Does that clarify?
    ---------------
    Those were all the relevant posts I could find. That's literally all I know, but I'm happy to answer further questions if you need clarification. Again I don't know all there is to know about the subject, so I doubt I'll be able to provide anything else. But perhaps there were some posts I missed where I went into some other details. Good luck!
     
    Remember the zinc and molybdenum 4x/d when using ALA. I'm not sure if it's best to take breaks on the zinc/moly in between rounds, or to keep using them off round -- that is one example of something I am unclear on myself -- there seem to be pros and cons to each option -- it's very likely neither choice is gonna kill you though. I'm not the arbiter of truth on this.
    ^^
    ... EDIT 5/24/2021 — additional explanation for the above paragraph. After your final round you should definitely continue to take the zinc/moly 4x/d for some time (probably at least a month), to purge residual copper, which will likely be quite high at this point. When you’re no longer planning on taking more ALA, there’s no reason not to do this... ALA causes some zinc overload but not nearly as bad as it does copper overload, and nothing purges copper quite like zinc... On ALA, you want to take just enough zinc to keep copper retention somewhat under control (30-50mg daily in 4 divided doses; it actually won’t even prevent copper overload, it’ll just slow it down, lol), and too much zinc will just exacerbate ALA’s zinc retention, so it’s a balance... But once ALA is no longer in the picture, if your copper is high, you can continue the zinc for a little while with generally no issue. Since the zinc is basically a limited resource in the scenario of ALA use (as in you shouldn’t take too much of it because it’s only a matter of time before your zinc levels become too high as well), additional means of reducing copper retention would be very wise, such as molybdenum (1-2mg a day in 4 divided doses), stimulating bile flow, and avoiding dietary sources of copper (such as nuts) — the zinc is not optional though, as those options don’t come close to the anti-copper affect zinc has (related to the metallothionein mechanism).
    There is some evidence that ALA depletes biotin in a hazardous way if you don’t consume extra in the diet or by supplementation.
     
    And never EVER stop DMSA before ALA. It will cause net redistribution into the brain. Stop them both at the exact same time or stop the ALA before the DMSA. If DMSA didn't have a slightly longer half-life than ALA, stopping them both together would not be safe -- but DMSA leaves the body slightly slower, so it is safe to stop them concurrently. This would not be the case if using extended release ALA, but you should never use extended-release ALA to begin with, since the absorption rate differs at different points along the digestive tract, and it hasn't been studied enough. Do not use extended-release anything in chelation.
    I don't know this, but I have an intuition that it may be prudent to start with a few DMSA-only rounds to reduce body mercury content, so that when you eventually introduce ALA, it won't start with the potential, temporary issue of a net increase in brain mercury -- though even if you did start with ALA, that issue would only happen if mercury concentration was greater in body than across blood brain barrier, and even if that was so, the issue would of course only be temporary -- after all, you're aiming to eventually get essentially ALL of it out, indiscriminately from everywhere. But I'd imagine even temporary increases of mercury in the brain are not desirable. This is a bit of a nod, it seems, away from ALA-only rounds, at least in the beginning, but Andy Cutler didn't mention that issue, to my knowledge (idk maybe he did), and he probably knows best. So I wouldn't worry about it.
    And if you want to go by the book (so to speak), time on should equal time off. That's not what I did, but that's what I'd advise as a measure of safety.

  15. The Stupid Game of School
    I am so angry at this SAT *rant*
    Why are you playing their stupid game?
    The SATs are a game designed to rake in $$$ for College Board. And universities are a game too.
    You are sad over a silly game they rigged up. Their game was never designed to help you, it was designed to help themselves.
    If you are interested in real education, do it yourself. Only you can educate yourself. To great news is, there is no gatekeeper other than your apathy and laziness.

  16. ? Actualized.org on Psychedelics ?
    🍄 Actualized.org on Psychedelics 🍄
    🍄 Actualized.org on Psychedelics 🍄
    • Blog post on How To Research Psychedelics.
    • PsychonauntWiki is a good resource for research.
    • VIDEO:  How To Plug Psychedelics - Nov 2018 - (Summary is here)
     
                Must Watch Episodes
    Ep 268. How To Use Psychedelics For Personal Development. (Summary)
    Ep 434. How Psychedelics Work - Making Sense Of Psychedelics.
    Ep 483. The Top Dangers Of Using Psychedelics. (Summary)
     
                Substance Reports
    Ep 267.  Magic Mushrooms:  The Amazing Power Of Psychedelics - Leo Does Magic Psilocybin Mushrooms!
    Ep 275.  5-MeO-DMT:  5-MeO-DMT - The Magic Pill To Enlightenment & God.  (Summary)
    Ep 298.  AL-LAD:  Trip Report - A Powerful Tool For Consciousness Work.  (Summary)
    Ep 312.  2C-B:  Experiencing Physical Death.
    Ep 492.  5-MeO-MALT:  Introducing The Other God Molecule.  (Summary)
    Ep 507.  Ketamine:  Lessons From Ketamine - Is Ketamine Useful For Spirituality?
    Blog Video. DPT:  The Other God Molecule.  (Summary)
    Blog Video. Salvia:  What it’s Like to Smoke Salvia Divinorum.
                (Leo says Salvia is very dangerous and does not recommend doing it)
     
                Blog Posts: Safety and Psychedelics  ⛑️
    • The Top Dangers Of Using Psychedelics - Oct 2017
    • The Antidote For Pre-Trip Anxiety - Aug 2017
    • 5-MeO-Always On An Empty Stomach - May 2017
    • No Trip Sitters - May 2017
    • Why You Should Never Do Salvia (6 mins) - Aug 2017
     
                Forum Threads
    • The Ketamine and Dissociatives Mega-Thread
    • The 5-MeO-DMT Mega-Thread
    • The N,N-DMT Mega-Thread
    • The 5-MeO-MALT Mega-Thread
    • The DPT Mega-Thread
    • The Trip Reports Mega-Thread
     
    • Psychedelics Safety and Protocols Mega Thread
    • Psychedelics Informational Resources
    • Psychedelic Research Mega-Thread
    • Best Psychedelic Trip Music Mega-Thread
    • Psychedelic Memes Mega-Thread
     
                Enlightenment & Psychedelics Episodes 🤯
          • Almost every episode in the Enlightenment section of Leo’s Blog Videos.
    Ep 283. Interview With Martin Ball - Using 5-MeO-DMT To Become Enlightened
    Ep 347. Enlightenment Experience Explanation & Key Lessons.  (Summary) (a response to ep 346)
    Ep 437. Outrageous Experiments In Consciousness - 30 Awakenings In 30 Days.  (Summary)
    Ep 495. Leo's Worst Bad Trips - Psychedelics Gone Wrong
    Viewer Compilation 🥳: Incredible, Powerful Concepts on Life & 5-MeO-DMT
    Blog Post and Video on Mapping Consciousness With High Dose LSD
     
                Tripping in Real Time Episodes
    Ep 346. Enlightenment Experience Happening In Real Time - LIVE! 🛋️
    Ep 431. Total Awakening Live In Real Time - Part 1. 📦
    Ep 432. Total Awakening Live In Real Time - Part 2. 🛋️
     
                Misc Episodes
    Ep 329. Correcting The Stigma Of Psychedelics - Part 1.
    Ep 331. Correcting The Stigma Of Psychedelics - Part 2.
     
    More Blog Posts on Psychedelics
                Trip Report 🧳
    Jun 2017:    Psychedelic Visions
    Jul 2017:    More Serious Than You Ever Imagined (note) 🤯
    Sep 2018:  Salvia Trip Report
    Jun 2019:   Dissecting The Psychedelic Experience 👽
    Jun 2019:   Who Are The Machine Elves? 👽
     
                Research 🔬
    Feb 2017:    Alexander Shulgin Documentary - Psychedelics Chemist (note)
    Oct 2018:    Psychedelic Receptors 📄 🧷
    Mar 2018:   Breaking Convention YT Channel 🤯
    Mar 2018:   The Origins Of Mind—Thomas Ray 🤯
    Aug 2019:   Psilocybin & Personality Change (note) ⁉️
    Aug 2019:   Microdosing Research ⁉️
    Jul 2020:     Legal MDMA Therapy Almost Here! (note)
    Jan 2021:    Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences 🤯
    Jul 2021:     Ketamine Klinic (note)
     
                Miscellaneous
    Jan 2017:    Drunk On Mushrooms
    Feb 2017:   The Despicable War On Drugs
    Mar 2018:   Dark Room Retreats & 5-MeO-DMT
    Mar 2018:   A Society Built On Psychedelics—Bwiti Tribe
    Sep 2018:   Your Brain On LSD
    May 2019:  Denver Decriminalizes Mushrooms
    Apr 2020:   Timothy Leary (note)

  17. Best Nootropics for ADHD
    Meditation styles effective for ADD

  18. Heavy Metal Detox
    Heavy Metal Detox Cost?
    Noted. 

  19. Things to Contemplate
    Contemplative Questions Database Mega-Thread:
    Personal Breakthrough contemplations of mine (I haven't contemplated too much though, but definetly yearn to do more because of the valuable life changing insights I get! )
     
    - What is Pragmatism? DM me If you want to know what insight I got
    - How am I ideological? See Leo's worksheet for more great questions on his ideology video. 
     
    ###
     
    The rest are ones that I want to contemplate, as I've been making a big to-do list for myself
    What is Productivity? 
    What is Clarity? 
    What is happiness? 
    What is rest? 
    What is proactive? 
    What is trust? 
    What does it mean to be human? 
    What is hard work? 
    Can another person give me something that's truly valuable?
    What is art? 
    What are thoughts? 
    What is Wisdom?
     What is importance? What/who decides what is /isn't important? What makes something important? 
    What is passion? 
    What is shame? 
    What is value? 
    How can I cultivate self-acceptance? What is self-acceptance? What are the facets of self-acceptance?
    What is the ego? 
    What is Inspiration? 
    What's the point of watching YouTube if I just forget what I watched?
    How do I enjoy the moment? What is enjoying the moment? What is a moment? 
    What is distraction? 
    What is self Deception? 
    What is addiction? 
    How is my attachment to comfort holding me back? 
    What is confidence? 
    What is fun? 
    What is failure? 
    What is Evil? 
    What is Fear? 
    What is Death? 
    What is survival? 
    What are the best seeds I can plant into someone's mind to help them to grow?
    Why should I care about what people think when I create my art?
    What is authenticity? What does it mean to be authentic? 
    What is success? 
    What is the ego? What makes it tick? What motivates it? What gets it on board? 
    What does Mastery in your psychology mean? What would it mean for my personal growth? Concretely. 
    Question the materialist Paradigm to death.
    What is Meaning?
    What is the exact relationship between Theory and reality?
    What is conversation? The types of conversation I value? 
    What is criticism? 
    What makes a great teacher? 
    What is relationship? 
    What does being civilized mean?
    What is awareness? 
    How does Authority work?
     
    3 most life-changing questions that Leo pursued and answered. 
    1. What is consciousness? 
    2. What is reality?
    3. What do I really want? 
     
    ###
     
    What metaphysical questions can I set out to answer?  (See Leo's video on the 64 list of fascinating questions someone can ask) 
    * What governs what's possible and impossible in the universe? What sets limits on the universe?
    * How can emergent properties arise out of nowhere? 
    * Does external reality exists at all?
    * What is God? What would the concept of God entail? 
    * What are thoughts
     
    ###
     
    Then there are contemplating Duality collapses. 
    Self vs other - - collapse this duality
    Collapse the dualities between the 5 senses
    desire and pain
    Conscious vs. Unconscious
    Especially given the example of sleep
    What's the difference? How are they the same? 
    What's the difference between teaching and being an ideologue? How are they the same? 
    Duality of seeing vs believing
    The duality of Journey vs Destination. 
    Contradiction versus continuity. 
    The Duality between psychology and life coaching.
    Journey versus destination. 
    Confidence versus stability
    Duality of consistency vs inconsistency