BlueOak

It can like to keep things that might make it look bad quiet, stuff it values it often likes seen. Depends what your ego is, if its formed to be as honest and open as possible, then that becomes the ego you are dealing with. If it's formed as a revealer of hidden facts, then that's what it's going to want to see done for example. Never trick yourself into thinking the ego isn't at play on some level, in all actions.

Figureheads do. Anything which over emphasizes identity. That capacity was obviously always there, this is a funnel for it. Now. It is better than having just celebrity figureheads. So I wouldn't want to see it removed. Attention would then just go back to what the TV provides. In future incarnations of social media, i'd like to see teams working on projects, or community groups with a healthy dose of personal identity, within those groups. This is something I used to try to organize in life, I almost had a desperate need to see it realised when I was younger. Society wasn't ready to give up their egos enough to see something like that realised often, even in many spiritual groups. Part of the problem as Acharya Prashant might phrase it, people value the body (I will say image/identity) over consciousness, and so celebrate their image/identity expressions of consciousness rather than their consciousness itself. I want to say that's beautiful but also builds a fragile place that people need to then defend, or continually keep up with effort/energy to keep alive. By focusing on their immediate image or identity they don't get to appreciate what four, or twenty, or a hundred people working together can feel like. Not when they are forced to for money but when they want to come together. I almost get heartache or nostalgia when I remember sports teams and what felt like, several people part of something and working together. Individuals are not ignored but celebrated as part of the team effort. Additionally of course focusing on individual, image-identity, when someone is censored it feels like they are censoring part of the identity, which that person has held to be supremely important, as opposed to a transitory experience of consciousness, or a group purpose. *Also want to note when you alienate your image/identity as bad or wrong, you end up in a terrible place as well. So avoiding that is wise.

Drug Use Abuse Rape Poverty Hunger Neglect Too many children already. Parents splitting up Parents arguing all the time. An overworked foster care system. People doing it themselves anyway, as they used to do before. Only now for Americans its unsafe and without medical supervision. There is nothing humane about having a kid raised in an abusive household. Trust me I know. It messes them up for life. You can work through it but its not till decades later that you see the effect of things you were not aware of. After all the work you can do on yourself, your personality is never 100% as others might more commonly be in a situation. There are still aspects of you from that abusive household that form your core identity and your mind forever. So for those in favor at least walk a few minutes in those shoes. Go sit with a few drug addicts, and talk to them and what they put their families through, they tell plenty of stories if you are willing to listen. Put some time in with people who go through physical or sexual abuse to see what you are condemning kids to.

Again a sample size of one! Society is a product of billions of lives making billions of decisions. Billions of environmental factors. If it were to rerun from beginning to end the result would most certainly be different. However as there is only now and everything else is imagined, none of that matters or will ever happen. A truism of life is, that you can't predict it. I sometimes see things others miss but life still blindsided me often enough, because unlike a lot of people it's not mechanical in its decision making. As a combined thing, existence, life, even humanity is more organic.

I perceive all politicians to be corrupt because they are working within a corrupt system. You are what you do day to day, and sure you can make small changes for the better (all that most of us ever achieve), but that's just how it is. Money first people second in politics.

I've been through phases. I've feared what would happen at the start. I've hated Russia for what I saw. Now I'm at an acceptance. This is how Russia operates its military. We just have to accept this is the reality. Bring those to account when we capture them and give Ukraine every possible way to push the invaders as far out of the country as possible. The main problem is if Russia take any significant territory, Ukraine doesn't join NATO (or possibly the EU), Russia don't withdraw and Ukraine doesn't surrender, then this could well happen again 5 or 10 years from now for the third time. I don't see many ways out now from having a constant simmering war. One I see possibly working is Ukraine joining the EU, and getting defense treaties from Europe, that only happens if they are in a strong enough position to tell Russia that is what they are doing. If the main powers in Europe accept and pledge to defend Ukraine at the end of this war, then we might have a peace everyone can accept.

You can't possibly predict what happens over a large enough group free to create whatever they want. A sample size of one or a handful doesn't reflect billions of voices. *Again I'll say that, the way the internet is designed, to be focused on he who shouts loudest or replies the most, for example, facilitates the most extreme eye catching material to be in focus, isolating more moderate or reasonable conversation.

Great news! 1) You've developed body awareness. 2) Your created identity is receiving some space to breathe. If you don't want to feel empty, meditate on something. Meditate to feel full, on a feeling or sensations, the wind or the warmth of the sun :D. Go into the sensation you are feeling somewhere etc. Like if you feel full across your forehead/temple, move into that. How you might ask, meditate on it. The questions are primers. Getting the mind to quiet long enough for you to notice. Like a good yoga routine, refreshing exercise or calming music.

The easiest thing to say is nobody knows. That is the good part of creative anarchy. The bad part is, that nobody knows. You never know what to expect, and often will get extremes drawing attention. Eye-catching material. Which isolates a lot of people from commenting.

I do however look forward to the next evolution, which nurtures individuality AND society at the same time.

It's part of a necessary back and forth to society, and the world. When in proper balance for the people it governs it's extremely helpful. If you try to put a lot of liberals inside a nationalist country they will live in misery and you will have nothing but social unrest for example, extend that to any ideology. For me the great benefits are creativity, individual development, and freedom to choose a career or make life choices. It's a great richness of experience for the individual and a society that helps you bring out your own talents and individuality. Creativity helps the development of new ideas, and technologies, so general progress for the country is increased. This is one reason why those in the west are at a higher state of technological development, because ideas and concepts have been allowed to not only flourish but are financed by investment. It's not the only reason but it is a big one. For me the great drawbacks are, focusing on the individual at the expense of the collective. This doesn't mean denying them what I just said above, it means the collective needs to be developed in tandem with the individual, not at the expense of either. Collective culture and identity also need to be nurtured. The environmental damage is obvious from an individualist culture and always needs to be corrected. Individualist cultures also still have one voice being too great, though these voices are obviously much more numerous, you often get a voice speaking on a subject and receiving widespread attention when they have little experience in it. It also has a habit of still breeding narcissists, but then nationalists or anything that promotes a figurehead do exactly the same.

Vice as usual come out with a good piece. The main point to make is the trouble in Syria isn't done yet, not by a long shot, nor is Afghanistan or by extension the surrounding countries like Iraq or Pakistan. A few things come to mind. This particular regrowth of Isis may be happening to destabilized Russian influence in these regions, and that's why its not being stopped. Alternatively it may be that Syria is destabilized enough, it'll be a ground for this regardless of what anyone else does. Third point is, as the US influence in the region is removed, the Russian influence is also going to end up collapsing, for it to become a natural islamic state anyway. To be obviously specific the Russians prefer Autocrats, the Americans democrats, but what might come out of this region in the next generations is neither.

For me if your interest is here, study modern day shamanism, and learn the effects of every single plant on earth. Its practical, you can use the knowledge in a modern career, a personal hobby capacity, or for mystical uses should you go down that path. Nature also balances you out naturally, so you avoid a lot of the pitfalls of coming from a more egoic or selfish place may present you. It also can be something you do in nature or from the comfort of a warm room and benefit those around you. Like mastering anything it can bring you to a similar point all people mastering a trade, craft, or discipline reach. All is self, interpreted however they interpret that. I think until you've fully hit stage yellow in its entirety, and you don't display the stage green emotional outbursts or resistance to others perspectives that I still have time to time. Then all magik or ritual is going to do is point you at yourself, especially the bits you hate the most and give all the attention to in hopes that one day you'll integrate it. Ritual is incredibly powerful. Ritual can be a yoga routine in the morning. It can be practice. It can be study. It can be alignment or awakening. It can be dreamwalking into other realities by setting routines before you sleep. It can cultivating a spiritual practice and gift whatever that is. Third eye, inner ear, speaking with spirits. All is your mind, so anything here now, or that once existed can be perceived in another form.

American and Russian arsenals are about even. Seeing's as many are short range tactical nukes on the Russian side. Its irrelevant though as both sides could wipe out life on earth many times over. This is hyberbole or an exaggeration of the actual combined reality we are currently living in. Russia will not intimidate others to dealing with them again. Especially as its EUROPE I don't know how many times I have to shout this, that Russia has harmed the most. There is no win-win scenario here. This is lose - lose. You are lying to yourself if you think many people in Europe will accept dealing with Russia even 5 or 10 years from now. It will be deeply unpopular for their governments. Though businesses will not care (Orange), there will be sanctions in place to make it very costly which they will care about. We all create our own version of reality to live in, so I understand how I can look at your position and you mine and think it fantasy. But what you perhaps can't see is how much people hate Russia especially in Europe and somewhat in America, that won't go away because the dead ukrainians and their now obliterated towns and villages will continue to not be there. It'll take a generation or two for that to go away. Europe and Russia are done for the foreseeable future.

The amount of civilian deaths will be in the 10's of thousands before the end, there are more than 5,000 dead in Mariupol alone. People still don't understand entire towns and villages no longer exist.

We can hope I fondly remember those days.

I want to argue against that but its difficult as I hate it too. Its not the words. Its not these words i'm typing to you now that's a problem, or the expression of them, its how they are easily weaponized for use against people, institutions, individuals, laws etc But, there's always a but. If this goes away where does the discontent surface? It will and by suppression it manifests in less healthy ways.

I think also 'the other' you speak of is not a bad thing in western culture. Other in collective societies is demonized by being separate. In western individualist societies everyone is 'the other', being the other or your own person, your own man, culture, city etc, is seen as a bonus to individualists.

Not true for me. As a teenager and into my 20's I was very interested in creative writing ,all through my adulthood I focused or drew inspiration from the region. Growing up I remember things like salahuddin portrayed in the Kingdom of Heaven Film as wise, strong, merciful and tempered. That particular film portrayed the christians in the complete opposite light (almost). Or Morgan freeman in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, by far the best character in that film. Another one I remember, though the character had to go through adjustment to his surroundings and inside himself, he ended up the star of the show. Here is a list of some good examples: https://mvslim.com/10-blockbusters-feature-positive-muslim-characters/ I think in more recent years what you say is more true but certainly not pre Iraq. I grew up with these sorts of Arab stereotypes. Not always accurate of course because this is fantasy, but as a kid this sort of heroic fantasy image of a wise or brave warrior was given to us.

We are entering a cultural stagnation and new dark age let me explain. As someone who gets every other post deleted on youtube still, lost a year of posts for a few remarks I made, and is completely banned from places like the CNN channel. He's not just up against a mountain its half the world, literally half an authoritarian world, perhaps more than that. As they gain more influence over the global mind this is the reality we have. I've seen most of the content on social dynamics or political content I would care to watch completely banned from the public view. Almost every character or interesting personality is either replaced in searches by bland milk toast content or deleted entirely. Its like that all over the net. The authoritarian boot is not just on the neck of free speech its completely crushed it. The only places you could now get independent content is now on the deep web (not the dark web) the vast majority of web content you will never see in a search engine but is still legal, just not shown to you. Which of course means you end up on some very out of the way locations, and forms part of the reason people feel this distrust toward institutions, having a bleaker outlook on life than ever. Also by forcing all the non mainstream content off platforms and search engines, it means we end up following characters or ideologies we'd never before consider just to have a new voice or perspective to listen to. So yeah. I think the future is very bleak indeed when it comes to personal expression, creativity generally, culture or advancement. We are in for a cultural stagnation which precedes any new dark age. *I should probably argue we are in a cultural stagnation right now. You only have to look at how much everything is reused in art or media to see it.

If you want the honest truth there is a bias in the spiritual community against America, and Europe. I have noticed in more than 1 speaker I used to think neutral or universal, now taking a more aggressive stance towards Europe and America. I used to be able to see them as uplifting consciousness globally rather than a personal bias. I no longer see people like that speaking. Perhaps they are embracing their national or cultural identity more. I used to hate that but its natural, its who they are and what they want. Their personal goal as opposed to teaching others a universal one. I could name names but that gets posts deleted so we'll leave the sentiment in the open like that. I do feel some of those spiritual teachers are leading us down a path to a much larger conflict in the future, else I wouldn't feel twisted by this I had that feeling over ten years ago and i've spoken about it before with emotion, or logic. I see all these changes stemmed from the Rise of Authoritarianism and what that will continue to mean to our lives in the future. I didn't see that at the time but I do now. *I will edit this a bit and say people like Mooji exclusively speak of centering and peace but people like that are now rarer than anything on earth, even among those referring to themselves as 'ascended masters'.

So I had some limited success but not much. Obviously conflict, outcome and understanding have a place, but as with anything they can become too often sort after. As I type this another way to speak of it is division. Conflict is division. Expecting Outcome is division from reality. Understanding can be division when it comes at the expense of experiencing life. I can almost fold outcome and understanding into one. Expectancy. It's not quite true but its close. All these things can come from a healthy place but they can also get in the way of yourself/life. Spiritual experience for example will be diminished if you seek understanding of how it happened as opposed to the message or experience itself. Its the same with many things in life, how as opposed to why. Spiritual experiences for me used to feel like free fall, because I had a shadow of powerlessness. Now my powerlessness is worn on my sleeve and doesn't manifest unconsciously. Conflict and division though is still in the manifestation of my spiritual experience. That's why I reached a state of consciousness that was more settled than when I started on the forum, to have an emotional peak and blow out. Its why I eat to feel love then feel conflicted with my need to lose weight. I am still exercising but I always put myself in a battle, between the weightloss and the gym work. If something isn't a battle or competition i'm not even sure I know how to live in it. I mostly just coexist passively or remain apart from whatever is going on. Probably remnants of my abusive upbringing, but conflict is in everything and everyone at the moment and so it makes it hard to ignore. I feel more at home in the tension of conflict or the isolation of covid because how the world currently feels is normal to me.

I am surprised people are surprised at the massacres but then I am also reminded that not everyone follows the war as closely as I do. Russia has been executing civilians for a month. That's what those incinerator trucks were for. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM-eRxEc_TutiPIbOS1YYbw/videos Again I point you to these best source of raw footage. Forget his predictions though he gets many right because he has access to this footage. Its more of use to follow where events are happening when they happen.

If that was the actual quote. It is yet more Russian propaganda that Ukraine doesn't exist so it can't have personal agency in the matter. As if 44 million people suddenly had no voice of their own.

My Addictions: Conflict. Outcome. Understanding. Therapies: Conflict: Detox from violence, in games, movies and media. Outcome: Try a lot more things with no outcome in mind. 1 new thing a day. | Don't seek outcome in conversations or interactions. Understanding: Stop asking why on everything. Stop trying to find a greater truth to all things, except that is a rat in a maze forever hunting the cheese and just experience life. Personal Life/Body Goals: Mind: Keep Meditating in the morning. Whatever comes up is fine. Find positive channels that I used to fill my mind with. Energy: Start Energetic work again, continue yoga. I have forgotten all the old teachers and programs I used in the past. I trust they will come to me again, the one I most want to remember is where energy is circled in the centers through the body. Body: Ran today for the first time in two months. Still getting back into weights, third week next week after a two month break. Finances: Sold something off to make way for a new course in ? Will decide when it comes in, and look for inspiration. Dream: Start instructing the Dream Body again on goals while sleeping Emotions: I'm Practicing Gratitude again and feeling/being a different way. I am unsure whether I need to neutralise emotions as before, as that leads to bubbles or detachment but perhaps some limited emotional control will be useful again. In certain situations. House: Keep working on the Garden, getting out in nature again. Family: Not sure. I'm never sure. I'll tackle it as it comes as always. Spiritual: Set spiritual goals again. Third Eye Work again. Spiritual ear work again. Lucid dream training again. That's what I have tonight as I sleep. It was a better day. I had that emotional outburst toward conflict, and apologize to anyone it effected, wherever they are and wherever I met them. My addiction to conflict is my biggest roadblock right now. So I put my hands together and stay in gratitude for a few minutes for all of us. Thank you.