Zest4Life

I highly recommend starting a workout routine and finding an activity you enjoy, like biking or hiking, whatever feels comfortable for you. Improving this part of your life can boost your self-respect and set a positive tone for the year. As an elite-level athlete, if I had to suggest just one workout, it would be the Mike Change Flow.

What do you think is the difference between wisdom and clarity as values? And how do truth/reality differ from wisdom and clarity? All three seem to overlap, though I’m not sure if I can see them as one, at least in terms of what they mean to me. It would help to see your interpretation of them.

Since he teaches (or taught) martial arts, I’d assume meditation came with the package. Thought you might be right, sometimes his thoughts tend to sprint in every direction at once. Basically, a Buddha with ADHD.

If you are listening guided meditations, please do share with me the ones you think are most effective. And also, does Peter Ralston have any out there on the web?

@theoneandnone Try listening to Ghostemane Kali Yuga on youtube, I'm sure it will resonate with you.

That hit me in a new way. The Gita basically says you can fight evil without becoming evil, but only if you fight from a different inner place (duty, clarity, and detachment). That’s the opposite of what turns people evil (hatred, greed, and the hunger for power). Krishna says that sometimes you must act, but how and why you act is what matters. If your motive is service and responsibility, force can stop harm without corrupting you. If your motive is revenge, ego, or pleasure in hurting others, you risk becoming what you oppose. I like Jordan Peterson’s rough way of putting it: "You should be a monster, an absolute monster, and then you should learn how to control it." Socrates once said "the only evil is ignorance", but does that mean no one ever commits evil on purpose?

It feels like "good" doesn’t really fight in the same way “evil” does, that’s part of what makes it good. But if good refuses to use the same methods, does that mean evil can only be stopped by something just as harsh? There’s that line from True Detective about how the world needs “bad men” to keep worse ones away. This scene really raises a question, can you stop evil without becoming a little bit like it? Where do you draw the line between “necessary force” and “becoming like the thing you’re fighting”? Does the intention matter more than the method? Do you think sometimes being “too good” just lets evil walk right in? And does fighting evil always have to come from anger, or can it be done from a calm place? Also, is nonviolence actually strong enough out here in the real world, or is that just something that sounds nice in theory?

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?