Zest4Life

Here is an interesting story about death. In 1972, Vesna Vulović was a 22-year-old flight attendant when her plane exploded over Czechoslovakia. She fell more than 10,000 meters without a parachute and somehow survived. She even made it into the Guinness World Records for surviving the highest fall in history. Her body was completely broken, she spent months in a coma, but she almost fully recovered and became known as the woman who beat death. But the twist is that she died in 2016 at age 66, and spent much of her life in complete loneliness and misery. Surviving the unimaginable didn’t spare her from a long, quiet sorrow. Sometimes beating death feels less like victory and more like a sentence.

Fear is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Don’t get me wrong, but this is pretty much what I imagine runs through my dog’s head on a daily basis.

It’s hard to find inner peace when someone’s drilling asphalt at 7 AM. City life really tests your sanity. Maybe ignorance really is bliss, those people look like they’re having a great time not noticing anything.

I genuinely feel like I'm being controlled by invisible forces lately. Living in city and social pressure are definitely a huge part of it, but maybe you're right as well, maybe it's related to some past life mistakes. Maybe I was a politician or something just as primitive. Maybe I don't even want to know Heard a surprising tip from Jordan Peterson (which is rare): ask a thousand dumb questions and you’ll stop being dumb. I don't think I'm dumb, but neither I'm a woke. So where else to ask big questions about existence but here.

It really hit me when Leo said in his last video that personality is a genetic thing and that we are discovering ourselves (not building). I suppose this is just an extended version of it.

But to what degree is free will actually free? Because if it were absolute, then you could choose to end your own consciousness.

Earlier I wrote about an experience I think was death where I found myself in a black abyss, no time, no space, nothing. At first it felt like absolute emptiness, but then I had the sense that nothing was there because I hadn’t created anything yet (possibilities felt endless). However, there are two things that I've been wrecking my head around. First, if free will exists and is absolute, could we choose what happens after death? Second, if nothing happens after death, can nothingness be aware of itself? Does awareness require a contrast between nothing and something? To illustrate this, is being aware of nothing like a fish being aware of water? Does a fish notice the water itself, or only the variations in it, like currents, temperature, salinity? If there were no variations, would the water disappear for the fish and become an invisible background? Is “nothing” simply the absence of perceivable differences, or could it be an experience in its own right?

* I should have posted this in the Psychedelics discussion, can some moderator move it there?

Little back story about me and how I even got to Actualized.org. When I was 3 years old, the USA bombarded my city, so I grew up in a post-war era. Because of this, I spent a lot of time in my village that was so far off the civilization (ironically a place called Devil's Town, a place that almost got nominated for the 7 wonders of the world). Not really sure if that's what got me into the spirituality, or the fact that I spent a lot of time in nature in the middle of nowhere (no TV, no technology, no mobile signal, not even street lighting). In such a place, the only thing a 5 years old kid could do is play with wolves, snakes, and think about the nature of existence. The more I reflected on life and death, the more I started to grasp the concept of infinity (see book on Leo's booklist called "Collision with the Infinite"). I kept thinking about the fact that I will die one day, and kept asking one and the same question. What if NOTHING will ever happen again. No more watching beautiful sunrise and sunsets, no more playing with animals, no more playing Yugioh cards, no more playing with other kids, no more listening to music, no more breathing fresh air. Not in one hundred years, not in a billion years, but NEVER AGAIN. There will be nothing, complete darkness and emptiness FOREVER. This was my collision with the infinite, and I didn't even know it yet. Moving fast forward 15 years into the future. I met some random guy on a birthday party who, for the first time, introduced me to the mushrooms, and told me about his experience on 5 grams. Up until this day, this guy has no clue how much he has changed the directory of my life. His story intrigued me so much that I decided to take 5 grams of Golden Preacher. When mushrooms started kicking in, I thought they're poisoned, and I was dying. That was the day when I died and faced my biggest fear, NOTHINGNESS. I ended up in a black abyss of emptiness, and I stayed there for millions of years (despite that trip lasted only 4 hours). That experience was so traumatizing, and it left a huge scar on me. But then something strange happened, something that pretty much brought me to Actualized.org channel. While I was in that black abyss, I got hit by this feeling that this is not the first time I've been here. I'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE! As if the dejavu happened to me, that place was suddenly very familiar. And then this thought hit me: "Nothing exists because you haven't created anything yet". Ironically, the Bible's opening line is "in the beginning was the word". And at that moment a light flashed out of nowhere, I felt the sensation of breathing, and the mushroom trip stopped. I finally came back to planet earth, but I thought to myself, these mushrooms are definitely not from this planet, this is some crazy alien shit (and I still believe that). Now, we get to the point where everything goes full circle (there's a good quote on this later on). I told my best friend what happened, and he got intrigued just as I was when I first met that guy at the birthday party. Soon we both started experimenting with mushrooms, until one day my friend took a DMT. None of us knew what DMT was at that time. His trip was so bad, so much that he experienced a complete mental breakdown, and ended up in a psychiatric hospital. It probably took him a year to stabilize. They're feeding him with these pills that literally block the dopamine receptors, and let me tell you, my best friend was like a zombie, a dead body without a will to even get out of the bed in the morning. That's some serious shit. Years went by where I avoided psychedelics because of this. However, I know that I'm on a heroes journey, I want to become a God, I want to know the Truth, and it keeps calling me 24/7. I really want to think that there is no such thing as "destiny", but I keep getting the signals. Every single day when I check the time on my clock, I see a very specific number, a number that happens to be my best friend's date of birth. EVERY SINGLE DAY I SEE THAT NUMBER ON A CLOCK. Everywhere I look I see it, whether it's a graffiti on the wall, or the price tag on the shirt I want to buy. Because of this, I'm planning to take DMT on my best friend's birthday (destiny must be fulfilled I guess). A few weeks ago I took 5 grams of mushrooms because I wanted to ask myself really deeply, is this what I want in life? Do I really want to become God? Do I really want to know the Truth? Is this my purpose? Do I have the courage to go into black abyss again? Will there be light this time, or will I be stuck there permanently (think of the spinning top in Inception that spins indefinitely)? How bad do I really want all of this? Will I loose my mind and end up at the psychiatric hospital? As I was reflecting on these questions, I came to one very important conclusion. It wasn't just a conclusion, but the words that I said out loud for the first time in my life, and I really meant it. I NEED HELP. It really took a lot of courage to say these words, both to myself, and to you. For the past few days, I've visited monasteries, spoke with monarchs, drank holy water... but I still feel that the apocalypse is boiling in me, and that I'm currently a time bomb. This morning I lit some incense and put it in an ashtray (they use them in churches for ceremonies and prayers), and I started thinking about (already watched psychology of conformity video) what would happen if a Christian guy, who truly believes in God, had a direct experience of God, BUT it turns out that the God is not what he believed it to be, or how God was described in the holy scripts. How would that experience change this Christian guy? As if the God heard my thoughts, an ashtray exploded in front of me. I quickly took the remaining's of incense because tit was still burning, and put it in another ashtray, and thought to myself "was this a coincidence?". And as if the God heard my thoughts again, the another ashtray exploded. Okay, definitely not a coincidence... I would really appreciate your advice on this, I really don't know what will happen when I take DMT, whether I will come back or not, whether I will loose my mind and end up in psychiatric hospital, and whether I will be able to function normally in this society afterwards. All I know is that something has to change very quickly, and that I need to make a choice. This time, I cannot reject the calling. It even crossed my mind to do DMT at the very top of the Devil's town (that way it will be in my 7 wonders of the world xD). I truly appreciate your time for reading this and helping me. There are two quotes I want to leave you with: "Through an action, a man becomes a hero. Through death, a hero becomes legend. Through time, a legend becomes myth. Through hearing a myth, a man takes an Action..." -unknown "Sometimes you're not meant to go over, or under, or around it. Sometimes, you're meant to go through it. You just have to get through it." - Elderly client in a lucid state, describing his battle with dementia.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve listened to Leo’s “Creating an Experience of No-Self” and “Next Level of Meditation”—they quiet my mind every time, and I can dive deep in under 20 minutes. @Leo Gura any chance of recording new guided meditations, maybe mixing them with binaural beats?

I was actually thinking about this the entire week, whether the list of skills should be at the very top of resume or not. But it makes sense to be. How would you go about jobs that aren't relatable to the one youre applying for? Should you leave the gaps in a resume?

Two of my friends got a really high paying jobs as system administrators, and when I looked at their CV, I was like "ain't no way". Very simple layout, no bullet points whatsoever, and job experience was described in like one or two sentences. No buzz words, nothing crazy, just briefly explained their previous job experiences. Now when I think about it, most people probably won't even read 80% of your resume if there's a ton of text. The other thing why I think it worked is because it created a bit of intrigue that would be revealed in an interview. Simple things somehow always work. Interestingly, the friend I was talking about above, after he got this job, he helped 20 or so people with their resumes. So yeah, in my opinion, your next goal is an evergreen industry. A lot of people have technical knowledge, but don't know how to present it and/or explain it. And in general, the very intelligent people usually don't handle the social interactions very well. So it really makes sense to make something like mockup interviews. Even the diamonds were at some points just a piece of dirty rock. They were just shaped and polished. The core is the same.

Hello everyone, I’m beginning my search for a new position in the IT industry and would really appreciate your advice. What strategies have you used to differentiate yourself during a technical or behavioral interview? Which key points should I always highlight? From your experience—regardless of role or seniority—how do you effectively present your skills and accomplishments? What do hiring managers most want to see? What questions do you pose to interviewers to learn about the team and the company? What signs during an interview indicate a great company culture? Finally, what approaches have you found successful when it comes to negotiating compensation and benefits?

Sometimes it's hard to tell if you're setting a trap or falling into one.