ougyarg

Program was very strict. We had a lot of ground rules we had to follow. We were busy pretty much the whole day, and most of it was spent contemplating. Biggest lessons/insights - I become conscious of who I am. I see now that I'm not anywhere in my experience yet still exist. - My experience at its base is whole and complete as it is. All suffering is something I add on top of what's there and I create with my mind. - The self is not objectively real. It's all concept. - If you pay attention to others enough you can start seeing the patterns/self they have. - I can calm my mind by focusing my feeling attention to my center, which is located beneath my belly button. - Peter said something to the effect that self survival is everything. I see bits of what he means. The more I look into it, I see that everything I experience is for me, and is something I generate in order for me to persist. I don't fully get what he's saying, but I got pieces of it. Peter is very intelligent. He's very aware of his surroundings. He can see things about people that others can't as easily. He's direct, honest, and cares about his apprentices. He has a strong personality and takes command of conversations/work projects. He's great at telling stories. He was such a bad ass when he was younger, and had a lot of good martial art related stories.

The program was very strict. From what I recall it was 8-9 dyads every day 6 times a week. A dyad is a ~40 min session where we take turns contemplating and communicating a question, most of the time it was on who/what we were. Peter came down once a day to do a satsang. The practice is to get conscious of what's true, and so a lot of the program was spent contemplating. We also had transformation objectives where each of us had goals of doing something that ran counter to the self we had. It pushed us to transform and become a different self. We also had work projects to do around the ranch to learn about communication, teamwork, and how to be efficient. One core thing from the program is to question. To open up and not know something and so you can begin to look at it with an open mind. It changes ones experience in relation to whatever your questioning as you see it in a different light then when you know what it is. Another core thing from the program is to be honest. The truth is not about what I want or don't want, it's about what's true. Another core thing is that I am responsible for my experience of life. If I'm suffering, feeling really bad, it's because I want to. Nothing's forcing me to feel bad, I am creating my own suffering. If I want to not suffer and be happy, I have to do it. No external achievement will do that for me.

Haha yes, I remember that video!

Ralston is not a scam. He has too much integrity to lie.

No idea, I just have concepts about God. From what I can see, God can't be a thing. Anything that exists has a specific form. It's exactly what it is if it does exist. God, which I think of as the origin of all things, can't be limited to one thing and so can't exist as something. I have nothing I can go on, as all my experience is something. I have no idea what God is.

It was worth it for me.

There's so much. The work isn't limited to Peter, it's about becoming conscious of what's true, and so it's a lot. In terms of principles, listening was a big one. It's about hearing another person's experience, what they experience, not what you think they mean. It's getting their experience, and recognizing the difference between their experience and my reaction to them. One insight was that my experience is already complete. There's nothing broken or wrong with me. All I need to be happy is already there. My experience is whole and complete as it is. When something just "is", there's nothing wrong with it. It's just existing. Wrongness is something I apply with my mind. What contributed the most to my growth is being honest about what's going on and communicating it to others. Not hiding and telling someone exactly what's going in your experience was scary and hard for me, but it made a difference and pushed me to confront uncomfortable truths about the person I am. Communication is having someone get your experience and for you to get their experience. It's something I use a lot of in my intimate relationship as it build a sense of connection.

I got free of some of my patterns and my overall suffering is less. But I'm still pretty much the same person. A lot of the work I did was becoming more conscious of what was there already. Pretty much everyone has reoccurring patterns they act to fix some part of them selves that they think is broken. It's good to become conscious of what those patterns are in oneself.

I did not have an enlightenment on my true nature. I did become directly conscious of who I am.

@Leo Gura haha nothing like that to report

I did a 8 month long program called the Consciousness Apprentice Program (CAP) with Peter Ralston/ Brendan Lea and finished the program in 2022. My experience of life has improved and I have became more conscious as a result of the program. I know many people in this forum are familiar with Peter Ralston's work and are probably curious about the work. Happy to help answer any questions to help others. I'm not here to gossip, tell stories, or do anything socially like that. I want to empower others and help them get more conscious.

@SirVladimir Thanks for the reminder to refresh myself on this book. Pulled out a quote that made me realize I spent a lot of energy being afraid I won't progress and worrying about the goal instead of focusing on how I can practice better. "Unlike the Hacker, we were working hard, doing the best we could to improve our skills. But we had learned the perils of getting ahead of ourselves, and now were willing to stay on the plateau for as long as was necessary. Ambition still was there, but it was tamed. Once again we enjoyed our training. We loved the plateau. And we made progress." @datamonster Thanks man, I appreciate it. That's so funny I was considering leaving my job and doing a coding bootcamp. I'm struggling to pinpoint if I feel passionate for data science though, I'm curious how you found your passion there. I'll PM you. @Leo Gura I'm murky on this point about playing to your strength. Based on books like "mastery" and the "talent-code" one could make an argument any skill could be mastered barring a physical aliment by using deliberate practice as tool to force progress. Why does playing to your strength matter? I mean I see the logic behind it. If I was 5ft tall, the chances of me going to the NBA is zero, even if that's what my heart really wants. Is it about making a compromise and finding a LP you're passionate enough about and you recognize you have a good shot of succeeding at? Kind of like an optimization problem where you try to maximize your passion and the limiters are your natural strengths. The strength assessment in your LP course gave out general broad categories that could apply to a many different fields. For example my top strengths were things like 'Self-control and self-regulation' and 'Industry, diligence, and perseverance'. Maybe I got those b/c of my Asian upbringing These things can be applied to any field. My zone of genius was also something broad as well, I love presenting and performing in front of people. I guess specific strengths/innate talent is something I have to assess myself. I see the logic of your analogy. I would just add the point that my vision was teaching people like myself, who really want to express themselves through singing but lack the innate talent and the guidance to get there. I would say my impact is more like a PUA teacher who was once socially awkward being able to inspire and teach a nerd to be able to express himself genuinely to hot chicks so he gets the sex life he wants. But hey calculus works too haha @arlin No worries man, I think I'm pretty good at taking criticism. That's fair, I hear tell singers like Bruno Mars and Chris Brown say they discovered they could sing very young when they imitated other people. I think natural singers have the ear and the ability to mimic sounds really well, thus they're able to copy other singers voices and make it their own. I'm curious, are you able to also copy accents easily? Like a British or Australian accent? haha just curious, I like to poke around the minds of natural singers. Thanks man I appreciate it!

Hi Everyone, This is my first post in the forums! I picked up Leo's LP course about 3 years ago and it has been a game changer for me. I went through probably 95% of his content and went on working on my life purpose (LP). I picked a domain of mastery that I didn't have any talent in, but I really love, which was singing. I worked hard over the years, got lessons, spent hundreds of hours practicing, thought about it, got feedback, and tried my best to get better. I've improved a lot but I don't sound as good compared to other people I see on YouTube (See my 2 year transformation video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4d02s9Dr2Q). My concern is there some innate talent needed to get to a level of singing that's considered pleasant to listen to, and I'll never get there no matter how much I try. I spent around 2.5 years on this and I'm hesitant to invest more time into it without knowing if I'll ever get there. The impact I want to make on the world is to eventually teach others how to sing so they can learn the ability to be able to express themselves musically, no matter how untalented they are. But if I can't get there myself, I feel there's no point in teaching it if not everyone can sing. I spent time thinking what other careers I could go into if singing doesn't work out. I'm ivy educated, have a job in consulting/finance and young (26 y/o). I could pivot to other things, before I get older and it'll be harder to explore. However I'm not passionate about finance, and the things that I'm interested in would require me to learn new skills and start from ground zero again. If I decide to pursue other things it would be more efficient for me to drop singing and focus my attention 100% on that instead of hedging to see if different LPs would work out. Have other people been in similar conundrums? Facing a barrier on attaining mastery on a skill and being doubtful you'll get there? What would guys/gals do if you were in my situation? Thanks a lot.