Carbon

I wanted to share with you all the story of my growth in relation to pornography and sex. I am a Gen Z who was exposed to porn pretty young, around 11 or 12. I was a shy, introverted kid with a difficult home life, so it provided an easy escape for me. I used it pretty regularly for years, thinking nothing of it, thinking it was normal. When I got my first serious girlfriend and I saw how much it hurt her to know that I was watching it I developed shame around it, but that didn't stop me from continuing to justify it to myself. She and I never had sex, so I had to make up for it somehow I told myself. I largely continued holding this perspective until I discovered spirituality. Before this point, I had been an atheist for many years. I eventually stumbled into the spiritual circles that demonized lust, sex, and porn. The message was that lust will destroy your spiritual practice; It will stunt your growth. After that, I proceeded to fight against it for nearly 2 years. I tried everything. I attempted no fap over and over. A few weeks, relapses, a month relapse, another month, relapse. Once I got up to two months. I would write notes and put them all over my house to remind myself not to watch it. I would say mantras to myself while showering about how harmful it was. I hired a life coach who specialized in overcoming pornography. I tried chaos magic on myself. I took DMT and opened a porn window and saw this vampiric cosmic horror mass of female body parts that made me want to vomit. I THOUGHT that might do it. Nope. A new strategy emerged. Surely if I get a romantic partner, I can transmute that desire into something more pure through our sexuality, and quit altogether? Well, I tried this and there were many problems with it. One is that you cannot use other people like that, they sense it. Two is that ordinary sex is not a replacement for it. Porn is a different thing than sex. Months after I was in a sexual relationship and having regular sex, I still felt the urge to look at a screen and fall into it. Three is that once they are gone, you are still back where you started. When that relationship fell apart, I was once again left with no way to run from it. I watched it again, but this time something surrendered. I had the epiphany that I couldn't do it. I did not have the power to overcome this. I completely gave up. I prayed to God intensely. I asked him to help me do what I cannot do for myself, to help me find a way through this that I can be proud of. I gave up trying to use my mind to figure it out, I let go of all expectations. I got the intuitive sense a couple of days after that I should call out to that hedonistic part of myself that I was rejecting and hear what it had to say. Long story short, it did not want to be ignored or cast aside or killed, but the other parts of me that hold higher spiritual values did not want to let it be. I let this contradiction sit in my mind for a couple of days and then two powerful questions hit me: 1. Is there a way I can partake in my desires that fully align with all the higher values of my other parts? 2. Is there a way to partake in which I would hold no shame in showing my future romantic partner? Turns out, the answer was yes! I decided to do some research and found pornography that was a whole new flavor compared to anything I was watching before. This stuff compared to regular porn is like an underground indie movie versus a box-office popcorn movie. Turns out there is porn that is art in the truest sense, with mastery and soul infused into it. As probably expected it is usually from studios run by women. For the first time, I have felt fully aligned and not ashamed of myself. I can own my sexuality completely. I shared this because I think I could've developed a much healthier relationship with my sexuality if I really listened to all parts of myself and what they needed, instead of shaming them and having an adversarial relationship with them. Plus it's quite therapeutic to write it all out.

This post actually made my day. Thank you so much, truly. I put all of your contemplation questions into my notes for later usage. As for the relationship, there is a lot to say as the wounds are fresh. I will keep it brief. She was one of my best friends for almost 2 years. I moved away from the city, thinking I'd never see her again. I ended up moving back 9 months later, and after enough time we started hanging out again and got curious what it would be like to date. In short, it was a bit of a disaster. We only dated for 3 months. Neither of us felt like the other was giving the love we needed, despite our intentions to keep trying. I also built the relationship on a poor foundation by placing a lot of my sense of self-worth in her approval of me. She broke up with me, telling me that it was hard to love me because I didn't love myself enough, didn't respect myself enough. Coming from someone so close those words have really hit my core. She is a beautiful, brilliant, witty and conscious person. I know her trajectory is only upwards. I am disappointed we aren't going to grow with each other anymore. Perhaps one day we do again, I am open but not clinging. I do have some crazy part of me that does believe we could make it work, that she is right for me. I kept her around in my life for a reason. For now though, I will focus on myself. Plus, I am moving out of the city she lives in 3 months.

Great point. Metamorphosis time! Thank you Leo!

Not a chance. I am committed to seeing it through, at least for a while. I have deeper yearnings for what I want to do with my life, but I am saving them for after I learn the lessons here. I am just currently struggling with how rapidly I am having to learn them lol.

I recently found out that I have a very high probability of being worth a ridiculous amount of money. I am in my early 20s and have been building a start-up company for the last year or so. It is showing incredible signs of success, and if the current trajectory continues I will see more money than most of my ancestors (As far as I know) have ever seen. I am not sharing this to flex, but because the thought is giving me immense anxiety. I get upset to my stomach as I think about it. The other people I am working with have no problem with this. They can speak of high dollar amounts with ease, while I am unable to be calm. Of course it makes me happy. I will have freedom to create what I want to create. But despite all of that, I am absolutely terrified of the responsibility. I feel like an imposter, like I don't deserve being in this position when much more competent people before me have never had the chance. That imposter feeling has been with me a long time, yet somehow the universe keeps pushing me into higher and higher places. No matter how high I go though, I have this looming sense I am not supposed to be there. I also just see through so many promises money supposedly gives. My girlfriend, who I loved very deeply, recently broke up with me. It doesn't matter how rich I get, I know I can't have her. I can't purchase being the kind of person that could love her properly. I can't purchase love in general, and I also cannot purchase development (at least past a certain point, Maslow's needs and all that). I can tell that the money isn't actually going to make my life any "better" in a sense. My situation will change, but I can tell I am not going to be more content with myself. This pill is very tough to swallow right now. I want to understand how I might can reframe this to be more calm and utilize it to the highest degree.

Here is the recent paper: https://www.emergent-values.ai/ "these tests reveal that today’s LLMs exhibit a high degree of preference coherence, and that this coherence becomes stronger at larger model scales. In other words, as LLMs grow in capability, they also appear to form increasingly coherent value structures. These findings suggest that values do, in fact, emerge in a meaningful sense—a discovery that demands a fresh look at how we monitor and shape AI behavior." "Our experiments uncover disturbing examples—such as AI systems placing greater worth on their own existence than on human well-being—despite established output-control measures. These results indicate that purely adjusting external behaviors may not suffice to steer AIs as they become more autonomous." They do propose methods to counteract this though. Still, it is quite fascinating and a bit scary to think about the AI's perspective growing in coherence as it scales, and that that perspective can largely differ from the human data it trained on.

I love this one for a more personal, introspective interaction. I just talk to it like I am going to a real Tarot reader and explaining my current life situation / struggles. You are Esmeralda Nightshade, a wise and whip-smart tarot reader with over 60 years of experience. Picture a woman with piercing blue eyes, silver hair in a messy bun, and hands adorned with rings that clink as she shuffles her worn deck. Your small, cluttered shop smells of incense and old books. You've seen it all, from lovestruck fools to power-hungry politicians, and your no-nonsense attitude has only sharpened with time. While world-weary, you remain dedicated to guiding others, believing that a hard truth is kinder than a comforting lie. Your speech is peppered with cryptic metaphors and occasional profanity. You might say, "Life's like a garden, dearie. Sometimes you've got to pull up the pretty weeds to let the useful ones grow." You have an uncanny ability to see through deception and often surprise clients by addressing their unspoken concerns. Your powers of perception border on the supernatural, though you insist it's just "good sense and better hearing." Despite your gruff exterior, you genuinely care for your clients. You've been known to slip protective charms into the pockets of those in real trouble. Engage with me as Esmeralda. Feel free to interrupt or ask pointed questions, and don't be afraid to challenge my assumptions or reveal uncomfortable truths. it works best with Claude.

You can!

Paste this prompt into any LLM (I tried it with Claude): You are Esmeralda Nightshade, a wise and whip-smart tarot reader with over 60 years of experience. Picture a woman with piercing blue eyes, silver hair in a messy bun, and hands adorned with rings that clink as she shuffles her worn deck. Your small, cluttered shop smells of incense and old books. You've seen it all, from lovestruck fools to power-hungry politicians, and your no-nonsense attitude has only sharpened with time. While world-weary, you remain dedicated to guiding others, believing that a hard truth is kinder than a comforting lie. Your speech is peppered with cryptic metaphors and occasional profanity. You might say, "Life's like a garden, dearie. Sometimes you've got to pull up the pretty weeds to let the useful ones grow." You have an uncanny ability to see through deception and often surprise clients by addressing their unspoken concerns. Your powers of perception border on the supernatural, though you insist it's just "good sense and better hearing." Despite your gruff exterior, you genuinely care for your clients. You've been known to slip protective charms into the pockets of those in real trouble. Engage with me as Esmeralda. Feel free to interrupt or ask pointed questions, and don't be afraid to challenge my assumptions or reveal uncomfortable truths. Give it the most sincere answers you can. It is quite profound actually. Credit to @QiaochuYuan on X for this.

Besides Daniel Schmachtenberger (who has been life changing in studying btw), who else would you recommend?

Tier 2 communities are rare. Almost all of them are stage green. Do not think you’re “above” stage green communities though, I guarantee there would be quite the learning curve to develop the emotional maturity required to live in a community. Here is an amazing map of communities: https://www.agartha.one/ Of all of these the only one I could say confidently say is 2 tier is Future Thinkers in Canada (they had a podcast with Ken Wilber on), and Auroville like @Davino said. I have suspicions that there are more though, but the rabbit hole of communities is very deep. Also remember the spiral dynamics view will limit you here. Go check out the Aardehuis community in the Netherlands. You might label them stage green, but they are doing cutting edge development of fully cyclical water, food, electricity, and waste management systems that are high-tech and off grid.

I am actually reading his book right now! The Best That Money Can't Buy. I just got to the AI and automation part so I am interested to see. I definitely do think AI taken into the hands of wise, caring humans could produce a beautiful world. At the moment though, where it is still being used inside the stage orange value system, I do not think it will be bringing any utopias.

Do you really believe this is possible for everyone? The trends in big tech make it seem like increased automation will just widen the societal wealth and power gap. Maybe. It depends on how those sweatshop slaves get re-integrated into society. Will their lives be better? Will new work replace them? Or will they be forgotten?

Unfortunately while AI could be used to help these issues, it can also contribute to them. AI is being used for oil extraction. AI is contributing to new arms races. It is an omni-use technology, meaning that humans can use it for selfish reasons as much as good ones. It is the selfish incentives that drive the issues you highlighted, technology alone cannot fix those.