Dan Arnautu

@jakub_friso I practically made a 360 degree change in all areas of my life since 3-4 years ago. And these kind of changes were made from year to year, not from 4 years ago till now. I've remained an INFJ (from the Myers Briggs Personality Test) throughout all of this transition. So, I could say that it is pretty accurate regardless of your life situation.

@Lorcan A high-school dropout is ineligible for 90% of jobs in America. A high-school graduate’s lifetime income is 50 to 100% higher than a non-graduate’s. Until you get even close to your goal, what are you gonna do? Do you have a 1 month, 5 month, 12 month, 1 year, 5 year, 10 year plan for what you are gonna do after you drop out? Ok, so barely anyone will hire you. Now what? Start a business? Let's hope you get enough to sustain yourself before investing at least 2 years of time and money into it, while not considering the fact that your business has a very high (90%) chance of falling flat on it's face (look up the numbers, I'm not saying these from the top of my head). Or do you think your parents will care for all your needs once you drop out? They will most likely send you to work and guess what? You don't even have a high school degree and nobody will hire you. You are free to do what you want. You are just looking here for permission and validation. If that's what you really wanna do, do it, but you won't have the right to complain later if it doesn't work out.

Yea. That's what healthy leisure time looks like. I like to consider going to the gym as leisure time, or walking while listening to an audiobook or podcast.

This is how much supplements actually amount to your health.

That's a very black and white way of looking at it. Dropping 30lbs of fat and putting 30lbs of muscle isn't just a ”lofty idea”. Getting more empowering friends isn't just a lofty idea and improving your finances isn't a lofty idea. An investment is something that gets you more than what you paid for it. Clothes deprecciate. They don't add money to your pocket. They are a liability. A good book on the other hand can save you 100's of years of mistakes. You are free to live on the street, be 400 pounds, die at 25 and live alone masturbating all day to porn.

I personally like handwriting more but I also love the portability of digital notes.

@username Try and come up with a template yourself, some sort of modular prototype/curriculum and then maybe more people will be open to the idea. I personally like it. I think some sort of assessment would be needed to detect problem areas and things that would need emphasis based on personal goals. 99% of people have a very low level of self awareness. This would lead to a modular curriculum that should be unlocked once the fundamentals from a general curriculum would be put into place. Feel free to play with these ideas, but try to come up with a concrete plan.

Lmao

So I've decided to use a pseudonym for my future youtube channel but I can't figure out which one to use. My full name is Dan Adrian Arnăutu (I am of Romanian descent). As you can see, the last part is hard to pronnounce and memorize and that makes me want to change it. Keep in mind only the last name needs to be changed. I want to keep my first name. Here are some names I came up with: Dan A. Edward Dan Arnaud Dan Cedrick Dan Arthur Dan Cormac Dan Aedan Dan Aaron Dan Edrian Dan Raven What do you think? Which of them sound too cheesy and which of them sound cool? Other suggestions are also welcome.

@PetarKa Thank you for your answer! That is a good idea! Will do!

@Martin123 Happy you can relate to the situation!

I know that there are no ”should's” or ”shouldnt's" in life and that the ultimate goal here is to be able to be happy and content with just yourself. I've found that I was in a much better state of mind when I was living with 2 roommate that I knew very well. Right now I live with just another roomate (which doesn't interact much) that is gone for most of the week, so I've been sitting by myself for almost the entire year, just studying and growing. The thing is, I can easily observe that I start to have a much more serious attitude towards life when I am by myself for a long period of time. Worthy of mentioning is that I don't feel a compulsive need to be loved, or be in a relationship, and I don't tend to treat relationships egoically (ex. calling friends if I feel lonely or something like that). I am pretty comfortable with being by myself, but it's starting to get pretty monk like. When I was interacting with my past 2 roomates everyday I had very deep conversations with them all the time and best of all, I was laughing everyday. How much do YOU socialize and what do you think is a good balance? Am I taking the solitude too far? I know that I am kind of in the middle of an introvert and extrovert. I never had a problem with sitting by myself and neither interacting with people, but when there was a 1:1 ratio I felt much happier, creative and in a more balanced state of mind.

@No-Thing What you are saying reminds me of a quote from Seneca's book ”On The Shortness of life” "Let us use moderation here: there is a big difference between living simply and living carelessly. We should also withdraw a lot into ourselves; for associating with people unlike ourselves upsets a calm disposition, stirs up passions again, and aggravates any mental weakness which has not been completely cured. However, the two things must be mingled and varied, solitude and joining a crowd: the one will make us long for people and the other for ourselves, and each will be a remedy for the other; solitude will cure our distaste for a crowd, and a crowd will cure our boredom with solitude. The mind should not be kept continuously at the same pitch of concentration, but given amusing diversions. Socrates did not blush to play with small children."

@No-Thing Thank you for your answer! Haven't thought about that. So, listening to my intuition would be a first thing to do. Yea, maybe I've been surpressing my intuition on this for some time now. Hard to balance between extremes when your reptilian brain thinks in black and white, haha.

Also, you can try the Sedona Method as describe here: https://actualized.org/blueprint

Check out Koi's videos on Astral Projection: He projected a lot of times. Compared to a psychedelic experience, you still have control over what happens and you can will your way back to your physical body at any time. I haven't projected myself, but it seems like a safe thing to do if you come to it with a positive mind. Every bad thing that can happen is just a mind projection you are creating (like seeing demons and what not). If you do what he says to a T, I don't think you would have any problem.

@Extreme Z7 This would help. He adresses the fear of nothingness. What you experienced is resistance from the ego. It's very normal. Just observe it, aknowledge it as being resistance and go forward. Fear is ok.

Not all heroes wear capes. :')

This might stem from a threatened ego, but I still need to do these readings for my school work (philosophy). It's hard for me to take or read about a really deep, profound concept, treat it objectively and work with it in my essays, like most academics do. Almost instantly I get emotionally triggered by the information and can't go on with it for a few minutes until I calm down. Concepts might include: the nature of the universe existence and nothingness itself the illusory nature of language etc. what is at the end of the universe Some readings sometimes throw me into mild psychosis or existential crises. Any tips? How do I treat all the information without emotional backlash? I try to treat the ideas as just ideas but it's very hard.

@cetus56 This made my day, lol. Thanks for the input, bro. The best silence is the one before blasting a power chord at full volume, lmao.

@username Yea, I see that now much more clearly. More mindfulness meditation it is then,haha. Maybe Nietzsche was right when he said that the mind is an impenetrable fortress. Some things you just cannot see until someone points you to them. Same way with those guys that suffer from the American Idol syndrome who find out they don't have a voice only when the judge tells them so after they sing. I think I should also practice the ”Flatten the illusion” exercise from Leo's video on ”Grasping the illusory nature of thought”.

@username What you said definitely helps. I will do that! Only one question, though. Can you give an example of ”identifying” with a thought? I know already that I'm not a thought. Do you mean it in a different way?

@username And how to I work towards being able to handle consciousness work? Yes, the thoughts feel like reality when they happen. Is meditation the ONLY way to overcome it? I meditated today for a first time after a long layoff and it felt great. Also, worthy of mentioning is that I'm not pursuing enlightenment right now. All the questions I'm asking and researching are just for schoolwork for my degree. And for me it's much easier to include nonduality in the schoolwork because none of my peers do that and I can get high grades easily with it. Though -> it leads to unconscious self inquiry and emotional labour. So what is actually happening is that I do advanced level stuff for school, stuff that I don't think I'm ready to integrate in my life yet at this level. I don't let myself go at my own pace. I remember Sadhguru saying the following as a metaphor for enlightenment: ”When you are not physically fit, climbing a mountain is extremely hard, but when you ARE physically fit, it's a pleasure to climb it.” Maybe I just haven't done enough meditation to be able to relate to my thoughts from a 3rd point of view, thus creating unnecessary suffering for myself, cutting myself with my own mind.

Myself being made of nothing, unconsciously trying to look at reality like a digital simulation, nothing being real but being there simultaneously, thinking that I do exist, but I exist in emptiness, everything not being threedimensional but something else, maybe flat but I just don't see it. All kinds of shit, some which I can't even articulate in words. Or, I unconsciously try to imagine what if when I die, consciousness will be recycled into the multiverse, another universe with entirely different fundamental laws than here. What would that look like? I wouldn't know but my mind is still trying to force a fit. All the while it is making me confused because I can actually manipulate stuff. I see that when I eat 1500kcal per day I start to lose 1kg of fat per week, I see that when I play a chord it sounds the same everytime I play it, but there is no hearer. It's just the happening of the hearing, nothing more. Imagine these thoughts at 2000 RPM, haha Maybe I should just get a dog. All of this theorizing can make me go insane, lol

@username For example the fact that there is no material object. That the table that I am holding my hand on is just a very high vibration through which I can not put my hand because it it moving much more rapidly than let's say a fan, not because it is solid. Or the fact that existence stems from nothing and that space sits on nothing etc. Things of the sorts. When I go deeply into them, my imagination goes haywire.