askdfjnak

Funny isn't it? It seems life's only true work is to step into that void and let the fall wash us clean. Here's another song I think you'll like: ... and those high school meatballs were so shit, but they were THE shit.

This is interesting because I have been working with this masculine/feminine dichotomy in myself as well. I haven't identified any women I see as role models but I think the men I most look up to are ones who have fully embraced and integrated their feminine sides and that makes them "stronger" men. Some examples are: Mooji Sadhguru Adyashanti Nelson Mandela and I feel like Leo is definitely moving in this direction. I used to have a visceral adverse reaction to watching Elliot Hulse videos a few years ago when he was this die hard alpha-male type but he has since changed A LOT and I love watching his stuff now. I think the blending of the two "energies" creates a person who is both firmly grounded and present in themselves (masculine) and fully open to embracing the world with a vulnerable kind of love that isn't tainted with insecurity or prejudice (feminine). That is ultimately what I hope to evolve into. I think Mooji is having a big impact on the world in a gentle way. I love that guy.

This is so true. I see so many people playing these stupid power games, sometimes I do it as well because I don’t like being controlled. I have been “contemplating” hierarchy within society for a while and I think this scene from game of thrones perfectly captures the human version what you wrote down here. We are just animals acting through a thin veil of civility; the thousand blades of Aegons enemies and the stories we tell ourselves to make us feel better. It doesn’t take much to lift the veil up and see what we are and to see the stories we hide behind, but we don't want to. We wait until the veil is forced up by something like war or famine or overpopulation, then we marvel at what humans can do to each other. I haven’t studied any history yet but I’m sure that the pages are filled with this. Maybe this will change as society evolves into higher levels of spiral dynamics, maybe not. … and don’t think you’re above all this because you’re a girl Why is it that men have an advantage over women in society?

@Annie Don't ask men for honest answers when it comes to sex. Ask other women; their intel will be much more accurate. How does your husband know how long other men last? Either all he has is hearsay or I'm really, really sorry.

God and the devil. Sucks that I'm both.

I KNOW RIGHT!? Why would you give up the cosmos for a bossy girlfriend? c'est la vie. edit: the show wouldn't be half as good without sokka

I think you can, you just have re-frame the outcome to be correctly interpreted by the subconscious mind. I read something very similar to what brovakhiin wrote down here: It's quite similar to law of attraction, where the more you think about something, the more you will be inclined to think about and be influenced by that thing in future, irrespective of negations. So if you're thinking "I don't like red cars" "I don't like red cars" "I don't like red cars" all you do is increase the subconscious' output for red cars, exactly the same as if you think "I like red cars" "I like red cars" "I like red cars". In both scenarios you will be inclined to think about red cars more and be influenced by any red cars that enter your experience. So if you have a goal to stop overthinking or to stop being affected by other peoples actions it won't work for you to write down "I must stop overthinking" or "I must stop being affected by others" because all you will do is amplify that. What you need to do instead is create a goal that will eliminate overthinking and caring about others actions that isn't defined by negations. For example to "stop overthinking" you could "start relaxing your mind" to "stop being affected by others actions" you could "start accepting others actions" You could then put these into a measurable activity like meditation or contemplation that you can pay yourself for. Eg. "Time spent relaxing my mind in meditation" or "Time spent reflecting on and accepting others actions at the end of the day." These are just crude examples but you could come up with something better if you spent more time focusing on it.

Then keep working until it's the only thing left to do.

You never carry stillness. It carries you. All you have to do is nothing.

I used to be very similar to you in high school. I was never really scared or anxious about taking exams but I felt like I always had to prove something. This is a poor way to approach learning and life in general. I can tell you already know this to some degree. I know I post a lot of Sadhguru videos but I think you will like this one, he has good advice for students: Good luck!

Well, I’m one month in to this now and I must say it has exceeded my expectations. I’m excited to continue doing it. I have tweaked it a little to maximize results. I added a bonus for completing 2 or more consecutive hours of a value event and a bonus for working on all value events in one day. This increases my motivation to stay focussed on one thing for longer periods of time as well as ensure that I don’t get stuck doing ONLY one or two value events. One of the things I noticed is that you can get exponential gains by choosing value events and habits that compound each other. Just like in this book (reviewed by frode) sleeping 8 hours a day and exercising ensures that you have energy all day and can repeat the process the next day. If you do that day after day after day your results will compound. If you add things like meditation, cold immersion, study, diet and work they all synergize and make you more effective at performing each of the others. HUGE GAINS TO BE MADE! I noticed that there seems to be a dogmatic subscription to the idea of changing only one habit at a time in the self-help community. I don’t think this is the best approach. It might be easier and more effective to change multiple habits at once if you put your strategic motherfucker cap on.

I want to clarify what I meant by this after having watched the most recent video Understanding How Paradigms Work (incredible episode). I did not know there was a term called "paradigm" but that's exactly what I want to use. When enlightened people try to communicate their findings (if they even attempt to) they have to speak about it through the paradigms in which they and their audience sits. When other enlightened people hear this, or when people who've had enlightenment experiences start to take these distorted interpretations on, it can sound as though there is a lack of consensus between different traditions. Enlightenment is a deeply humiliating experience for the ego, and leaves the "enlightened person" much more humble than when they start. This combination of factors makes it less likely for people to walk around all day saying "I'm enlightened" because if you've had any genuine spiritual experiences your paradigms have been kicked 6 ways to Sunday and you'll be very comfortable in the idea of keeping quiet and very open to the possibility that there could be more to discover, wherever you're at. On a side note, I remind myself constantly that I am likely to be humiliated by reality many times in my lifetime. I do this so that when the next day of humiliation comes I don't have to suffer it so much. Reality is probably going to fuck me up for writing something like this, in this way, with this mode of thinking ^ That's OK. Bring it baby.

Don't worry, the process of life will instill desire into you sooner or later. As long as you know that enlightenment is achievable and you know the implications of enlightenment, you're good to go. If you're already meditating then you're golden. Keep it up as best you can and you won't have to hope, something will hit you. It's just a question of time.

I watch this annually. It is probably my favorite TV show. So many scenes in it speak directly to my soul, especially the exchanges between Iroh and Zuko. I noticed that Zuko and Aang both evolve together and their development is mirrored throughout the seasons. In the end I think Zuko grows much more than Aang which is why he is my favorite character. I remember this scene hitting me like a freight train a few years ago:

There is a problem in answering this question because some of the core facets of enlightenment include the understanding that all concepts are false (including enlightenment) and the self that maintains these concepts is also false. So, to say “I am enlightened” is false, to say “I am unenlightened" is false, to say “I’m not sure" is false, to say “I have had an enlightenment experience" is false AND they are all equally true. To make matters worse, there are many other facets of enlightenment to be discovered after the core ones have been realized. Enlightenment is the same for all enlightened people but there are different levels of embodiment of “enlightenment”; some people have embodied it more than others and have come to deeper levels of understanding. When enlightened people recognize this, they will be more reluctant to say “I am enlightened” because they know the there is always more to uncover. To make matters worse still, there is a lack of definitive consensus around these understandings because it is so rarely explored and because the people who explore it don’t usually try to communicate their findings. If they do, their communications are deeply flawed because all concepts are false. Any definitive consensuses and road maps that may exist are locked up in esoteric traditions away from the general population. I would say that there are a lot of people on here who have come to some degree of insight into Truth, but I doubt anyone will say they're fully enlightened.

Resistance comes from the ego, facing the resistance is called purification. You will come to realize that all of this confusion and uncertainty is also part of the resistance, embrace it. Remember the importance of balance and following your intuition. You need to strike a balance between pushing yourself and accepting what is, use your intuition to guide you through that. Keep meditating, even after you have a breakthrough. I have experienced plenty of this, even after massive breakthroughs. I continue to work now. It sounds like you're getting deeper, good luck.

It's not that good, I'd say that clip is the best part.

@Nahm I appreciate the flattery, but I'm not that young and I'm not that smart I just listen to smart people in the hopes that some of it will seep through via osmosis. < I learned this word from a smart person. Einstein and Saduguru both say that intelligence is being able to take the complex and distill it into simplicity, not the other way around. Lao Tzu said that "All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small" I'm trying to embody these insights and it seems to be working judging by your comment!

I don’t really know how to begin this because everything is connected so I’ll just jump in here: - Artificial intelligence is moving outside of the realm of science fiction into our everyday lives. Just because we don’t see humanoid androids walking around doesn’t mean that technology is still rudimentary. Machines have already long surpassed human ability in specific domains. -AI’s are now able to perform creative tasks such as creative writing and music composition on top of mechanical and mental labour. -We don’t need to wait for “true” artificial intelligence to be concerned about the impacts that these technologies are going to have on our lives. Consider self-driving cars and general machine learning. The threshold for a machines ability to replace human labour in domains such as transport are incredibly low. - Huge portions of the work force could be made redundant in the next 2-3 decades, and this is going to have many knock-on effects for the rest of the employment industry. I can imagine competition for remaining jobs and industries is going to soar so even if you have a niche job/business that you don’t believe is going to be affected you will probably be made redundant too. - There will be an increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor making it harder for people to move out of their social class. If you think that technology gives lower classes of people more power, consider how algorithms that track your internet usage and content could be used to your detriment. - Employment and entitlement are just stories that we believe on a collective level, as is beautifully demonstrated by the village metaphor he uses. - The only way we are going to be able to resolve the issues that we are bound to face peacefully is to change our stories. That could be wishful thinking, though. -Over the past year I have made 3 separate google accounts and have embodied a different persona when I use each of them to get a feeling for how search algorithms function to keep you in your bubble of information; As the gravity of your search history expands the harder and harder it becomes for you to access new domains of information, it got to the point where I would enter the exact same search terms into google or YouTube and end up with completely different pages and videos that google thought “I” should watch based on my search history and the person google thought I was. - Even if our content isn’t being tampered with by vested interests, our own tendency to seek out information that maintains our perspectives and opinions will work against us as we move into the future. As a collective we have perspectives that we will not break out of easily. Algorithms will list content purely based on public engagement. - The media, business, politicians and the public are the major stakeholders connected by the economy. These stakeholders are inseparable, each is dependent on the others. AI is going to radically impact these domains, regardless of ideals, political positions or public opinion. - Consider how topics trend in favour of spectacle and not in favour of core political issues, skewing public engagement away from core issues into the spectacle of politics. This could be worsened by an increasingly technologically dependant society where algorithms match content based on popularity rather than accuracy or relevance. i.e. the public will be subject to more and more tabloid realism. -Consider the connection between business and the political sphere. As public engagement decreases and people’s attention is misdirected business and politicians will be able to get away with sketchier policies and sketchier economic stories. Democracy will still exist but it will be nothing more than a story. -When all our jobs have been taken by AI’s, the government will have less interest in maintaining it’s citizens to be productive members of society and produce treasure. There will be less need for spending on healthcare and education and maintaining infrastructure. - Meanwhile corporations will boom as their products become increasingly automated and efficient and they will be able to have a heavier and heavier impact on policy. -Democratic leaders will require fewer and fewer keys to power and will have narrower sources of treasure setting up the perfect conditions for global dictatorships while the dishevelled public will be spending their days arguing over which politician or commentator hurt their feeling on the morning news, delivered to them by an AI that thought it was the most relevant content to serve up. I have only just started to dip my toes into the clusterfuck that is political philosophy, futurism, geopolitics and economics, but I really want to learn about these things and would appreciate all opinions about similar topics. It is really complicated, but that is no excuse for ignorance.

@Nahm I appreciate the covert intentions behind your questions. I’m well aware that there is much less to existence than all this. There is also much less to existence than the law of attraction and much more to be discovered and experienced than positive emotions and the fulfilment of desire. Heads up. To answer your question precisely. What am I going to do? I am going to continue asking questions, reading responses and developing my understanding of these issues.

After having thought about it for a little while the solution is quite obvious. The fundamental problem is that we have a voracious appetite for DOING and not BEING. This manifests itself into the core economic story that we tell ourselves. We have purpose in DOING our work because we NEED to work to survive and cater to our list of personal neurosis and identities in the spare time that remains after our 9-5s, or whenever we come in from the office of our private businesses. The rise in technology has seen a rise in productivity and abundance but the value of that has been taken away from the colllective and pooled into the hands of few. I don't think it's malicious intent on the part of the wealthy, so much as it is necessary to maintain order in society. Can you imagine what would happen if that wealth was re-injected into our systems of exchange? We are perfectly capable of giving everybody handouts, and/or increasing minimum wages to ridiculously high levels. We are perfectly capable of providing more than enough for everybody. It's ironic that doing so would probably increase our collective wealth further (see link). But we don't really want that. If we didn't have didn't have corporate magnates and dictators and politicians and a fraudulent banking system and journalism and if we didn't have terrorism and if we didn't have wars and international conflicts and if we didn't have to spend the majority of our time in jobs that we hated and if we had healthcare and education and safe homes and food and water. WHAT THE FUCK WOULD THERE BE LEFT TO DO!? We could could watch a few netflix series, but that would get boring. After that, what? Nothing. We would have to start being. And that is far more terrifying than anything listed above.

I do something similar when I wake up in the morning. It's really powerful to take a few moments to just shut the hell up and bow down to reality. It's taken a lot for me to get to the point where I could actually do that. I am a pretty stubborn/arrogant/narcissistic ego you see. I also stop to contemplate and fully accept my impending death from time to time. When I do, I like to recite this once or twice.

Are you responsible for this sort of thing? : http://www.warrenbuffett.com/does-the-anne-hathaway-effect-really-exist/ Does this actually happen?

@jse Score. How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people? @Nahm I didn't pose any solutions, I didn't even really mean to imply a problem. These are just things that interest me and I want to learn more about.

When you start to embrace your functional insanity: