ted73104

@Waken I totally relate to what you said. Facing your fears doesn't mean that you can always find some way to embrace them. Many people have told me to just don't think about the deep problems I have and rather to focus on the lifestyle that I want. This is basically the law of attraction, and from my experience, it does work to a certain degree. However I was too stubborn to just let go of trying to resolve my inner issues. So I spent a long time, 5~6 years, struggling with my shame and fears, struggling with my identity. Eventually I was able to feel into my deep emotions and be conscious of what was causing the pain. In this process, I found out that you actually need to gain a more powerful love than the "self" love. Because there is a lot of stuff in life like courage, compassion, various social skills that basically can only be trained when you're with a group or someone else. And it is the non-stop practice of fully accepting the concept of "other" where you can strengthen your capability to Love. When you strengthen your Love towards "other" events, things, or people, you also will gradually gain more awareness. This awareness will allow you to connect dots more easily and help you be more conscious about your issues than you did before. Sitting alone at home and just comtemplating about these stuff was important, but not enough. I was very fortunate to be able to identify and embrace my fears through a process that occurred to me mostly. Most of the stuff that happened and people I met which/who eventually helped me were not planned. However I know that stepping out of your comfort zone and obtaining more love for everything around you is the way to embracing your fears. This might be a very long struggle as it was for me, but I hope everyone who takes this journey is able to find peace in the end.

I think that a person's job doesn't really have to be something that person is passionate about. In reality, it should be about the amount of value you produce. Passion and profession don't always colide together. Most people aren't passionate about making a business out of the thing they love, because when you bring the topic of money and business strategy into your passion, things can turn sour sometimes. Survival is still very important in life, the farmer must always exist in order for everyone to be fed. But who wants to be the farmer? My dad used to work in a farm growing rice with my grandpa in the hot summer when he was young. And there was no air conditioning back then. My grandpa said to him, if you don't want to live this way, then you better find a way to get into college. My dad eventually went to the US and got a computer science degree. Of course we now live in better conditions and have a lot more room to choose what we want to do professionally, but that still doesn't really mean we can do whatever we want. I would say you need to first get a job and be a wage slave of course to get a certain lifestyle that you can accept. All jobs are boring in the end, so it doesn't really matter if you are passionate about your job. Then if you are able to raise your consciousness to a state where you want to create something that works for society and maybe become an entrepreneur, then you can go create a business first as a side hustle. Then when your business starts generating stable income that is enough for you to quit your job, switch full time over. To be passionate about a business requires more consciousness. Until you gain that level of consciousness and are okay with the lifestyle which is required to create that business, maybe you could just do some more personal development and just continue living the "good" life. The life of being employee is not bad anyways~

There are some very good responses above, but I'd like to add that there is a possibility of your issue being a mental mechanic issue. What I mean is that this is an issue that occurs in where the mechanics of your emotions or mindset functions, and it can still occur even if you fully love yourself. For example, even when you fully understand yourself and accept yourself, you might still not be popular among your peers, you still might behave awkward in some certain social situations. And if your mind is aware of how awkward you are in those cases in this example, you might react in some way or try to evade those situations. You don't want those situations to occur. Connecting the dots is the key here, sometimes you know all the points, but it is actually very hard to connect the dots and realize the totality of your inner psychological situation. However it also might be the case that you've connected all the dots, and you're still experiencing these anxieties. In this case, you should know that human thoughts can change quickly. You can learn and understand an idea very quickly, but the emotions that you have about these ideas change very very slowly. So there is a training process where you have to train and learn how to express a new emotion to the thing you fear. The process is slow at first, but the change gradually gains pace. I think to fully love yourself, you eventually have to fully love your surroundings and everyone in it. Only when you've found love for the world can you gain a love so strong to defeat your inner negative emotions. This is not easy, but I hope there will be people around you who you can talk about this with.

I feel you. What you are experiencing is a very deep emotion that cannot be altered by any logic reasoning. People like us felt this kind of depressing emotion for a huge chunk of our childhoods, and so this emotion has been deeply embedded within ourselves. Basically there is no fast remedy. I don't think there is a quick way to get rid of this emotion. Rather, I think we should find some time each week to be alone and feel into this emotion very deeply. Sort of just let yourself feel sad and deep into the emotion. Following some of the logical suggestions here, like you are not defined by your mom, doesn't fully resolve the situation, although it does help. I personally think the only way is to be able to formulate a very strong love towards something to combat the negativity. And don't try to pursue divine love directly, that is just not possible. Find love towards something like a hobby, a group of friends like yourself, or a boyfriend. Something that can distract yourself from your current unhappy emotions. Then try to build upon those new emotions and improve your love towards for example one of your close friends. Make your relationships or your work more meaningful. Only by obtaining a much stronger love can you defeat the old hatred.

Farewell, may you find a more suitable sanctuary for yourself. Best wishes to you!

There is no good or bad, only the mind makes it so. TV shows are not bad, there isn't a should statement where you need to do more. And so you can enjoy the shows as much as you want. What is interesting to know is why you have guilt when you start watching TV shows. To what image or lifestyle are you comparing yours to? Although there doesn't exist a perfect standard or the correct way/attitude to pursue life, you yourself have internally created a standard or a set of core values. These core values should be fun to identify, and you only need to find effective ways to actualize them one by one. However, I think these core values shouldn't be pursued using negative motivation, because that kind of motivation doesn't last very long. So you should try to accept your current habits/lifestyle and then try out some changes that will bring you closer to what you really want internally.

Hsin-Chu, Taiwan

I think the direct answer to this question is that you as a human will die and cease to exist. That part of you is finite for sure. What we don't know is whether if our consciousness will awaken after it "leaves" our body. We don't know if there is this other part of us which is not a part of our physical form.

Hey, everyone belongs here. No one is a fraud in the realm of God. I think for most people, there is always an external reason that drives people to pursue self-actualization. For example, it's because you want something that you can never get in your current state, or you are in some ditch that you desperately want to get out of. For me, I was always obsessed with this sort of "be a good Christian" notion, because I wanted the type of lifestyle that some of the more "successful" Christians had in my previous church. I wanted to be successful in my career, relationships, and a beautiful loving girlfriend. However my standards were way too high relative to where I was. The harder I pursued, there seemed to be a negative backfire within my mentality, because I was pushing myself too hard using strategies that did not work. I was eventually depressed and judgemental about myself. Then by chance, I was introduced to post modern philosophy from a Christian friend at the church interestingly. I hated the stuff initially, but eventually I was fascinated by how some of the ideas really opened my mind up. I eventually started to question everything the Church taught. Then I got into therapy, as I began to suffer more from the backlash I got from my church. I saw a few therapists along the way, and one of them told me that there was no standard cure for my problems. The only way I could get out from being depressed most of the time was to find my own way, and that everyone else could only hint at how I could formulate my own method. I started searching for ideas online. Initially I found guys like awaken with JP, Tony Robbins, which were great but didn't really work for me. But then I found Leo and Teal Swan, and things started to change...

Hi Everyone, Ted here from Taiwan.

I actually have other questions: 1. How do we differ our ego conscious from our God conscious? Is our God conscious even active right now? 2. Also, if our ego conscious depends on our brain, wouldn't our ego just die after our brain ceases to function? How would we "transfer" into our God conscious then like Leo describes in his videos?

Yes, you really need to see a therapist and get your inner issues resolved. Totally agree with @Bojan V on that. This is a lot of work, you will even need to find the suitable therapist for yourself first. But I hope you go see a therapist soon, because the longer you leave these internal issues hanging, the harder it will be to resolve them later on. Life to us is very personal, and I think it should be. The problem though is that sometimes we take it way too personally. The world and everyone else is basically totally fine with what kind of person you are. I mean, really! It is only you who cannot accept how the world and other people react to you. You have a very strong desire for something. The desire is so strong, that when the world is not able to give you what you really want, you suffer inside. And yeah, life is brutal in this way. You have to strategically engineer and create the life you want. All that takes a huge amount of effort, but is absolutely doable no matter what position you're in. People look down upon themselves too easily. They prop up others very easily too, when the truth is that everyone is very very ordinary. If you search really hard for the objective truth, there is nothing special about anyone. No one is better than you, everyone would be exactly the same as you are if they were in your shoes. Life is ultimately......... a game. It is just a fucking game. And if you didn't know, it is your game. We are all just the characters that you've projected outwards. On this stage, you've branded yourself the coward. But since this is just a game, doesn't really matter what kind of character you're playing. I mean, if you think you're a coward, then that's great. Just be the coward. Try to accept yourself for just what you are. There is a lot fun being the coward. Embrace the coward! How do you become the hero if you don't know what the coward is like? How do you become the hero when you can't even love and accept the coward? After you've learned to accept from a wider perspective, go whichever way you wish. What you really want in the end, is not anything external. It is not this shiny heroic image that you imagine you should be. It is just love. A deep love and connection with everyone including yourself. True love. I hope you have the courage to find it.

It really depends on who, because there are all kinds of people in the church. The stage you're on actually depends more on the people who actually brought you up, like your parents and family, or maybe your teachers at school. Your pastor or the people who you attend service together may have some influence, but not too much. So there are people on all stages, but of course most people are on stage blue or even red in my experience.

Hitler was a German hero in his time. People who hate Hitler just aren't able to the get into the context of that time from Germany's point of view.

If you embrace the "darkness", you would be free. You wouldn't be doomed as you think in the long run. After that, change would become more likely if you pursue small goals at a time. What you don't know is that although it takes time to evolve, you are not actually that far off from where you want to be. Another thing is that if you maintain the same survival mentality that you have now, you will still be depressed even if you got the partner or the type of lifestyle that you wanted. Rebirth, that is the way!

I am quite curious on why you think you are not worthy and what type of partner you would like to have.

Do you think your low self esteem has to do with your performance in the classroom, meaning studying and passing exams? Maybe if you could add a perspective to how you observe and measure yourself, you would understand and feel better about yourself?

It would seem like you are not happy with the current situation that you're in. However in your mind, you think that it is way too hard to change the circumstances in your current state. So there are two forces at play here, one is you have a strong urge to change and transform yourself based on I would guess a very negative motivation. The other is a strong resistance of pain, because you've already worked so hard to get this far. Maybe you realized you went in the wrong direction at some place in your life and now you're so tired you want to rest, you just don't have any energy left to work on the transformation you want at the moment. These two forces create a big conflict and it is very normal to have conflicting emotions as well. On the surface, you desperately wish you could change something about your life, but in the inside you actually want to avoid the pain of "loss" or behaving in a way you deem "unworthy". This is probably why you are avoiding positive emotions, because once you express your positive emotions, there would be more room for you to feel more negative emotions, the emotions you want to escape right now. Your deep consciousness seems to know that there is a huge amount of work you need to do in order to get where you want to be. However you want to avoid thinking about that, because the Truth is sometimes unbearable. You need to know the greatest transformations in life always starts with realizing how "low" or "bad" your current state is. Sometimes external accidents even, to force people to realize the Truth. If you are able to find peace with yourself right now, you will embark on a new journey towards a higher level in your life. What you need to do now is to very slowly identify where the huge pain is in your emotions. Clarify the points that are causing these painful emotions and gradually feel in the pain very consciously. Normal people would just keep on evading the pain by distracting themselves non-stop. This would only bury the pain deeper and deeper until they've lost touch with the source of their problems. Then I would suggest talking with a very close friend, someone you could say anything to and is willing to listen. Express the kind of negative emotions your are experiencing right now, and what are causing them. Do this until you get very conscious about what you don't accept about yourself. What you need right now is rest, the conscious type of rest. You need to stop trying to change and just simply be and observe yourself. Feel in the pain and let the source of the pain be your future motivation to achieve greatness.

Good to know that I was able to help a bit. Most of my response were only guesses, I was afraid my description wasn't really your case. You'll have to find a way to untie the knot to go forward, not easy though. Other than that, I don't have anything more to add at the moment. I don't think there is a sure path to understanding psychology. I had serious depression before and I spent a lot of money on different therapists. Then luckily there were Youtubers like Teal Swan and Leo Gura to aid me more. Then it took over 7 years to implement the stuff, this is where I really understood what I learned previously. It really depends on what topics you're really interested in and whose content would be able to allow you to understand more. Google is your best tool. Basically you only need find methods to fix one problem at a time and you will naturally understand more when you resolve those issues one by one.

Okay, so this is sort of a knot that has formed in your psychology. You don't like it when you don't act naturally in front of others, and then when you judge yourself for this, you then think judging yourself for not being able to act naturally is also "wrong", so you judge yourself again for judging yourself. I've had one of these before. The issue here is that your natural behavior doesn't seem natural to you, but you don't really have the chance to even change your natural behavior because of the multi-layer judgements. What you want on the surface, according to my limited understanding, is that you want to act like someone who is very authentic. But what you really want inside is to not have to endure the very bad feelings of being judged. One side of you desperately wants to find a way to act naturally while the other side wants to prevent yourself from being judged. It's really a situation where you're stuck. What you need to realize is that even if you are disfunctional in some way, that is still authentic. It's okay to be relatively not confident, not smart, not outstanding. You don't have to act at the level you imagine you need to be at in order to be authentic. But then again even before allowing yourself to be your current self, there is the issue of these multiple layer judgements... Two directions you can do at the same time. @Waken's suggestion is very good, try to drop the need to be outstanding. Your true thoughts and natural self are being held back because deep down you think they're not good enough to bring up. But if you're able to let yourself go and allow yourself to express the "low" thoughts that you are feeling, the result can be better than you expected. If you express what you truly feel, people will relate to that. Then again, like what @Nahm said, you need to be conscious of why you are judging yourself. Where are the judgements coming from exactly, why are you judging yourself in this way. I think you understand that perfectionism is toxic, so trying to be perfect never works and so that shouldn't be the goal. You'll need to find time when you're by yourself to contemplate on this part. And don't think of this question logically, think of it emotionally. Dig into your emotions and feel the origin of the judgements/thoughts. Once you're able to find where these thoughts came from, you might be able to see how dumb these thoughts of judgement are and be able to drop them.

Although you may not be so different from your peers, it is the feeling that you're not on the same level as them that is limiting you. And we should respect your feelings. So if you think you're not on the same level as them, okay, then let us assume you're not on the same level as your peers for the moment. Even though that doesn't really matter In the present moment when you are with your peers, it seems that you quickly try analyze the situation, things like "let's see if I'm good enough as my peers", "how am I not good enough as they are", "in what ways are they doing better than I am", "how am I going to fit in", etc. When you are in this mode of thinking, you create an atmosphere of doubt, fear, and judgement which would be sensed by your peers and friends. Although it is basically just you judging yourself, this atmosphere would likely push people away from you, because no one likes the kind of judgement you're putting on yourself. Normally, most people are not as sensitive as you are in this kind of way, and no one likes to over analyze things. If everyone had to analyze and see if they were good enough among their peers, then no one would be good enough and everyone would be just like you. And even if the people with you didn't sense your analyzing emotion, they would still have difficulty interacting with you when you're doing this, and thus they might just get bored with you and leave. So it's mostly not that you have a problem, but that you think you have "many problems" that is causing this. If you are able to be okay with yourself, then everyone would be totally okay with you and want to hang out with you. The problem is, it is hard to be the real you. And this is everyone's problem. Life is not about being good enough. I believe happiness is way more important than being "great", whatever that means. And to be happy, you need to be your normal self in front of others. So when you are with your peers and friends, kick all the judgement to the side and just simply be with them. Let your natural emotions flow through. Be your very ordinary self. If you want to analyze the situation you can do all that afterwards. Simply feel and observe who you are, and also who your peers are. Don't judge anything. Once you are able to just be yourself without needing to achieve anything, you can see that you're as light as a feather and happiness is just at your finger tips.

Everything done consciously can be fruitful and produce desirable results.

Ahhh, but whether or not we really know the actual reality of the conservatives could use some more study, observation, insight, and understanding, right? It is easy to just demonize them, but they're just ordinary people like you and me. Only the background and environment where they grew up is different.

This questions seems to be a bit off from the previous question being discussed. But are you talking about the politicians or the American people? I think the US would seem to be more and more politically divided due to the kind of topics that is being thrown about whether in the media or on the Internet. However, are Americans more divided than ever now? I don't think so, the division was always there and hasn't changed much. Only the talking points the politicians are using have become more and more extreme. This doesn't mean the politicians' view has changed either, they're only doing this to grab more attention.

No they do not. Mainstream media is cherry-picking the "racism" in conservatives for political gain. I think that is very obvious if you look at CNN or MSNBC. I wouldn't say they don't care about the real issues, but they are definitely doing this in a way for build a narrative that overall supports the democratic party.