Substituting the criterion of truth for some proxy criterion (e.g. practical, nice, "spiritual", popular, consensus, etc.)

Although I'm into spiritual work — countless hours of 'consciousness' work — I've never tried psychedelics.
All I did is to focus my mind in-depth on an object, on my breath, or on my awareness — you can be aware that you are aware.
And I pushed myself to get the practice — in a unique manner — to the next level. The quality of the practice matters more than the quantity of it — you can focus three hours straight or you can do it ten times a day but with less intensity.
1. Focusing on something for three hours without pause.
2. Focusing on something for ten minutes, ten times a day.
It is a huge difference.
The good news about consciousness work is that you can heal yourself mentally and physically. Your biology is not separate from your mind — your body is an organism; all of its functions are intertwined.
To truly experience well-being, you need the capacity to stay present effortlessly, for hours on end, just like a Zen monk does.
Being anchored in the present moment is a skill — it requires lots of practice and @Leo Gura knows that. Leo discovered so many things on his own because he succeded in biting the bullet — he took the practice seriously and applied it often, despite that pain that surfaced when he figured things out alone.
Without enlightenment work, is it very difficult to understand yourself, how your body functions, and how the mind operates.

For most forms of programming mathematics is not very important. What type of thing are you doing?
I suggested the following in another thread about this here a while back:
“I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, from whence derives the famous idea of the "strange loop". You might also like David Foster Wallace's book Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, tracing the work of mathematicians like Georg Cantor.
It is claimed that Plato only ever gave one public lecture titled 'On The Good'. He spent the whole time talking about mathematics, leaving most of the attendees puzzled. Unfortunately, this lecture has not been passed down, but Pythagoras also used mathematics as the ideal vehicle for expressing metaphysics and philosophy. His surviving works have been compiled in the book Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie. You could also investigate practices such as Gematria and the use of numerology in the Kabbalah.
Mathematics today has almost entirely lost its essential nature and is largely the whore of the physical sciences and man's lust for technological power. At best, it is the more or less idle luxury of an elite class of ivory-tower academics who know nothing of true spirituality. On this note, the best book that I can recommend to you is The Metaphysical Principles of the Infinitesimal Calculus by René Guénon.”
The last book I mentioned is the best. Guénon would have crushed Spiral Dynamics like an insect but he was at least “Stage Yellow”.
Hope this is helpful to you!

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, from whence derives the famous idea of the "strange loop". You might also like David Foster Wallace's book Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, tracing the work of mathematicians like Georg Cantor.
It is claimed that Plato only ever gave one public lecture titled 'On The Good'. He spent the whole time talking about mathematics, leaving most of the attendees puzzled. Unfortunately, this lecture has not been passed down, but Pythagoras also used mathematics as the ideal vehicle for expressing metaphysics and philosophy. His surviving works have been compiled in the book Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie. You could also investigate practices such as Gematria and the use of numerology in the Kabbalah.
Mathematics today has almost entirely lost its essential nature and is largely the whore of the physical sciences and man's lust for technological power. At best, it is the more or less idle luxury of an elite class of ivory-tower academics who no nothing of true spirituality. On this note, the best book that I can recommend to you is The Metaphysical Principles of the Infinitesimal Calculus by René Guénon.

Last night at 7:20pm I insufflated 5mg of 5-MeO-MALT. All of the electricity in my home was turned off, and the living room was bathed in the hushed tones and glow of dusk. Intended as a small handshake dose, I am thankful to say that this was a beautiful experience.
Here are my raw notes:
[7:20 PM]
5 mg 5-MeO-MALT intranasal 
[7:29 PM]
I can feel the weight and warmth of tryptamine, along with the slight bitterness of the chemical in my sinus. The room is very still and peaceful in the evening light
[7:37 PM]
Gentle but distinct tryptamine energy. Slight shivering, pupils dilated, feeling deeply at peace
I've moved from the couch to futons on the floor
[7:39 PM]
Just beautiful
[7:41 PM]
God is napping on the shore of its own infinite mind
Infinite creation
Pure infinite love, forever
[7:43 PM]
Zero visuals
Just shivering bliss
[7:46 PM]
Dozing and gazing
Stretching
[7:49 PM]
Some downloads about polarity
Seeking/entering
[7:50 PM]
Love is just welcoming the moment
[7:54 PM]
Creation asks that you trust it enough to trust yourself
To go all in
[8:04 PM]
Got up to pee with no trouble getting about
Light very pleasant body load
[8:05 PM]
I spent some time mirror gazing, which is the only place where visuals manifest.
[8:09 PM]
If I trusted my hand enough to weigh out the truly miniscule dose I would consider pushing it
But this is a beautiful, beautiful first meeting
It's so clean and pure
Dare I say innocent
"Nothing else to do." Vibes
[8:12 PM]
I've just been laying on the floor listening to the sounds of creation all around me and inside me
There's never been a hair out of place
 
I am so grateful to have been introduced to this substance. The body load was light and very pleasurable, and there were almost no visuals. The peak effects lasted for under an hour, and by 2 hours there was only a mild afterglow. This was a deeply rewarding and encouraging first encounter. I already look forward to the next, where I'll go up to 8 mg.

A Zen Master lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain.
One evening, while he was away, a thief sneaked into the hut only to find there was nothing in it to steal. The Zen Master returned and found him.
“You have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.” 
The thief was bewildered, but he took the clothes and ran away. He thought:
'What a buffoon. At least, I got away with these clothes.'
The Master sat naked, watching the moon.
“Poor fellow,” he mused, ” I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”
-----
A solid understanding of systems theory + a practical spiritual integration of its primary principles is essential for the investigation of truth. In fact, for a life dedicated to greater understanding, fulfillment and happiness at the deepest level.
As you view reality through the lens of systems theory, you'll see avenues you have yet to explore in your spiritual journey. It is a forever open feedback channel that is left within the system until your last breath.
Spoiler Alert: Your entire mind/body system and reality structure is expressed within the core principles of systems theory.
Here are some of my explorations and studies into systems theory.
The Essence of Systems Theory
1- Understand the Key Harmony of the System
Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves.
If it’s a piece of music or a whitewater rapid or a fluctuation in a commodity price, study its beat. If it’s a social system, watch it work. Learn its history. Ask people who’ve been around a long time to tell you what has happened. 
This guideline is deceptively simple. Until you make it a practice, you won’t believe how many wrong turns it helps you avoid. Starting with the behavior of the system forces you to focus on facts, not theories. It keeps you from falling too quickly into your own beliefs or misconceptions, or those of others.
It’s amazing how many misconceptions there can be. People will swear that rainfall is decreasing, say, but when you look at the data, you find that what is really happening is that variability is increasing—the droughts are deeper, but the floods are greater too.
It’s especially interesting to watch how the various elements in the system do or do not vary together. Watching what really happens, instead of listening to peoples’ theories of what happens, can explode many careless causal hypotheses.
Every selectman in the state of New Hampshire seems to be positive that growth in a town will lower taxes, but if you plot growth rates against tax rates, you find a scatter as random as the stars in a New Hampshire winter sky. There is no discernible relationship at all.
Starting with the behavior of the system directs one’s thoughts to dynamic, not static, analysis—not only to “What’s wrong?” but also to “How did we get there?” “What other behavior modes are possible?” “If we don’t change direction, where are we going to end up?”
And looking to the strengths of the system, one can ask “What’s working well here?”
Starting with the history of several variables plotted together begins to suggest not only what elements are in the system, but how they might be interconnected.
And finally, starting with history discourages the common and distracting tendency we all have to define a problem not by the system’s actual behavior, but by the lack of our favorite solution.  - The problem is, we need to find more oil. The problem is, we need to ban abortion. The problem is, we don’t have enough salesmen. The problem is, how can we attract more growth to this town?
Listen to any discussion, in your family or a committee meeting at work or among the pundits in the media, and watch people leap to solutions, usually solutions in “predict, control, or impose your will” mode, without having paid any attention to what the system is doing and why it’s doing it.
2- Explore Your Mental Models Clearly (After Direct Experience)
When we draw structural diagrams and then write equations, we are forced to make our assumptions visible and to express them with rigor. We have to put every one of our assumptions about the system out where others (and we ourselves) can see them.
Our models have to be complete, and they have to add up, and they have to be consistent. Our assumptions can no longer slide around (mental models are very slippery), assuming one thing for purposes of one discussion and something else contradictory for purposes of the next discussion.
You don’t have to put forth your mental model with diagrams and equations, although doing so is a good practice. The more you do that, in any form, the clearer your thinking will become, the faster you will admit your uncertainties and correct your mistakes, and the more flexible you will learn to be.
Mental flexibility—the willingness to redraw boundaries, to notice that a system has shifted into a new mode, to see how to redesign structure—is a necessity when you live in a world of flexible systems.
3- Respect Data & Information Channels
Information (both conceptual and non-conceptual) holds systems in harmony whereas delayed, biased, scattered, corrupted or missing data can make feedback loops malfunction.
For instance, decision makers can’t respond to information they don’t have, can’t respond accurately to information that is inaccurate, and can’t respond in a timely way to information that is late. I would guess that most of what goes wrong in systems goes wrong because of biased, late, or missing information.
If I could, I would add an eleventh commandment to the first ten: Thou shalt not distort, delay, or withhold information.
You can drive a system crazy by muddying its information streams. You can make a system work better with surprising ease if you can give it more timely, more accurate, more complete information.
4 - Attend to What is Important, Not What is Immediately Perceivable and Quantifiable
Our culture, obsessed with numbers, has given us the idea that what we can measure is more important than what we can’t measure. Think about that for a minute. It means that we make quantity more important than quality. 
If quantity forms the goals of our feedback loops, if quantity is the center of our attention and language and institutions, if we motivate ourselves, rate ourselves, and reward ourselves on our ability to produce quantity, then quantity will be the result.
You can look around and make up your own mind about whether quantity or quality is the outstanding characteristic of the world in which you live.
Pretending that something doesn’t exist if it’s hard to quantify leads to faulty models. You’ve already seen the system trap that comes from setting goals around what is easily measured, rather than around what is important.
So don’t fall into that trap. Human beings have been endowed not only with the ability to count, but also with the ability to assess quality.
Be a quality detector. Be a walking, noisy Geiger counter that registers the presence or absence of quality.
No one can quite define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value.
But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t directly experience and radiate them, if we dont point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist within the social reality the system is based on.
5- Generate Feedback Policies Within Feedback Loops
President Jimmy Carter had an unusual ability to think in feedback terms and to make feedback policies. Unfortunately, he had a hard time explaining them to a press and public that didn’t understand feedback. Let me explain:
Carter was trying to deal with a flood of illegal immigrants from Mexico. He suggested that nothing could be done about that immigration as long as there was a great gap in opportunity and living standards between the United States and Mexico. Rather than spending money on border guards and barriers, he said, we should spend money helping to build the Mexican economy, and we should continue to do so until the immigration stopped.
That never happened. This is a failure of feedback policy.
You can imagine why a dynamic, self-adjusting feedback system cannot be governed by a static, unbending policy.
It’s easier, more effective, and usually much cheaper to design policies that change depending on the state of the system.
Especially where there are great uncertainties, the best policies not only contain feedback loops, but meta-feedback loops—loops that alter, correct, and expand loops. These are policies that design learning into the management process.
6- Value the Good of the Whole
Remember that hierarchies exist to serve the bottom layers, not the top.
Don’t maximize parts of systems or subsystems while ignoring the whole. Don’t, as Kenneth Boulding once said, go to great trouble to optimize something that never should be done at all.
Aim to enhance total systems properties, such as growth, stability, diversity, resilience, and sustainability—whether they are easily measured or not.
7- Listen to the Wisdom of the System
Aid and encourage the forces and structures that help the system run itself.
Notice how many of those forces and structures are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Don’t be an unthinking intervenor and destroy the system’s own self-maintenance capacities.
Before you charge in to make things better, pay attention to the value of what’s already there.
Get a feel for what to play with and what to allow its maturation process to unfold at its own pace.
8- Locate Responsibility Within the System & Open its Feedback Channels
That’s a guideline both for analysis and design. In analysis, it means looking for the ways the system creates its own behavior.
Do pay attention to the triggering events, the outside influences that bring forth one kind of behavior from the system rather than another. Sometimes those outside events can be controlled (as in reducing the pathogens in drinking water to keep down incidences of infectious disease). But sometimes they can’t.
You need to accept that.
And sometimes blaming or trying to control the outside influence blinds one to the easier task of increasing responsibility within the system.
“Intrinsic responsibility” means that the system is designed to send feedback about the consequences of decision making directly and quickly and compellingly to the decision makers.
In a sense, the pilot of a plane rides in the front of the plane, that pilot is intrinsically responsible. He or she will experience directly the consequences of his or her decisions.
Designing a system for intrinsic responsibility could mean, for example, requiring all towns or companies that emit wastewater into a stream to place their intake pipes downstream from their outflow pipe. It could mean that neither insurance companies nor public funds should pay for medical costs resulting from smoking or from accidents in which a motorcycle rider didn’t wear a helmet or a car rider didn’t fasten the seat belt
A great deal of responsibility was lost when rulers of a nation who declared war were no longer expected to lead the troops into battle. 
These few examples are enough to get you thinking about how little our current culture has come to look for responsibility within the system that generates an action, and how poorly we design systems to experience the consequences of their actions.
9- Always Stay a Student
Systems thinking has taught me to trust my intuition more and my figuring- out rationality less, to lean on both as much as I can, but still to be prepared for surprises.
Working with systems, on the computer, in nature, among people, in organizations, constantly reminds me of how incomplete my mental models are, how complex the world is, and how much I don’t know.
That’s hard. It means making mistakes and, worse, admitting them. It means what psychologist Don Michael calls “error-embracing.” It takes a lot of courage to embrace your errors
10- Embrace Complexity
Let’s face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity and uniformity.
That’s what makes the world interesting, and that’s what makes it beautiful.
There’s something within the human mind that is attracted to straight lines and not curves, to whole numbers and not fractions, to uniformity and not diversity, and to certainties and not mystery.
But there is something else within us that has the opposite set of tendencies, since we ourselves evolved out of and are shaped by and structured as complex feedback systems.
Only a part of us, a part that has emerged recently, designs buildings as boxes with uncompromising straight lines and flat surfaces.
Another part of us recognizes instinctively that nature designs in fractals, with intriguing detail on every scale from the microscopic to the macroscopic. That part of us makes Gothic cathedrals and Persian carpets, symphonies and novels, Mardi Gras costumes and artificial intelligence programs, all with embellishments almost as complex as the ones we find in the world around us.
We can, and some of us do, celebrate and encourage self-organization, disorder, variety, and diversity. Some of us even make a conscious moral commitment of doing so.
11- Expand the Time Axiom
One of the worst ideas humanity ever had was the interest rate, which led to the further ideas of payback periods and discount rates, all of which provide a rational, quantitative excuse for ignoring the long term.
The official time horizon of industrial society doesn’t extend beyond what will happen after the next election or beyond the payback period of current investments.
Don't make the same mistake.
In a strict systems sense, there is no long term and short-term distinction.
Phenomena at different time-scales are nested within each other.
Actions taken now have some immediate effects and some that radiate out for decades to come. We experience now the consequences of actions set in motion yesterday and decades ago and centuries ago.
The couplings between very fast processes and very slow ones are sometimes strong, sometimes weak. When the slow ones dominate, nothing seems to be happening; when the fast ones take over, things happen with breathtaking speed.
Systems are always coupling and uncoupling the large and the small, the fast and the slow.
When you’re walking along a tricky, curving, unknown, surprising, obstacle-strewn path, you’d be a fool to keep your head down and look just at the next step in front of you. You’d be equally a fool just to peer far ahead and never notice what’s immediately under your feet.
You need to be watching both the short and the long term—the whole system.
12 - Defy the Disciplines
In spite of what you majored in, or what the textbooks say, or what you think you’re an expert at, follow a system wherever it leads. It will be sure to lead across traditional disciplinary lines.
To understand that system, you will have to be able to learn from—while not being limited by—economists and chemists and psychologists and theologians.
You will have to penetrate their jargons, integrate what they tell you, recognize what they can honestly see through their particular lenses, and discard the distortions that come from the narrowness and incompleteness of their lenses.
They won’t make it easy for you. But you can do it.
Seeing systems whole requires more than being “interdisciplinary,” if that word means, as it usually does, putting together people from different disciplines and letting them talk past each other.
Interdisciplinary communication works only if there is a real problem to be solved, and if the representatives from the various disciplines are more committed to solving the problem than to being academically correct.
They will have to go into learning mode. They will have to admit ignorance and be willing to be taught, by each other and by the system.
It can be done. But, ego gets in the way if not careful.
13- Expand the Boundary of Care - Empathy - Compassion - Love
Living successfully in a world of complex systems means expanding not only time horizons and thought horizons; above all, it means expanding the horizons of caring.
There are moral reasons for doing that, of course. And if moral arguments are not sufficient, then systems thinking provides the practical reasons to back up the moral ones.
The real system is interconnected. No part of the human race is separate either from other human beings or from the global ecosystem.
It will not be possible in this integrated world for your heart to succeed if your lungs fail, or for your company to succeed if your workers fail, or for the rich in Los Angeles to succeed if the poor in Los Angeles fail, or for Europe to succeed if Africa fails, or for the global economy to succeed if the global environment fails.
As with everything else about systems, most people already know about the interconnections that make moral and practical rules turn out to be the same rules. They just have to bring themselves to experience that which they know.
---
Hope you get value from this post. 
Let me know your thoughts.
Much love,
Arda
 

I think being authentic just comes down to sharing what you really care about, which always comes across and is the only way to keep you going anyways. I can't imagine building a brand or videos I'm not super passionate about.
Also, definitely have a bias towards action. You don't know if people would care if you haven't tried it. I would care  And also, as long as you put yourself out there consistently, it will take off.
Just put something out there all the freaking time. Anything. And you'll find your way. There's no shortcut. I've experimented with online, offline, videos, blogs, magazines, pictures, products, etc. You'll naturally see what you're drawn to and motivated to keep doing. Again, anything that you can keep doing AND is a passion of yours will pay off eventually. I'm sure about that!
As Gary Vee said "Document, don't create"
Document your journey, document what's going through your mind, what you're reading and learning and you'll never run out of content and it will always be authentic. That's how you create a tribe.
Best of luck!

As a copywriter whose USP is ethical and sustainable marketing, I might be able to give you a few insights on this problem. 
The simple answer is don't lie, you don't need hype to run a successful business.
That includes FOMO or scarcity tactics if unjustified for example putting a timer on a product that isn't going to run out.
When marketing your products or services I would recommend that you focus on creating promotional content that aligns your product or service with your ideal customers that need what you have to offer the most.
The majority of marketers tend to focus on creating new customers with the promotional material they make. This is great in the short term because you'll make lots of sales however this approach dilutes the brand reputation/usefulness of your service or product because you will be including people who need your product less or not at all by hooking them on with imaginative sales techniques.
Taking the majority approach will wreck the long term success of your business because low-quality reviews and chargeback will slowly accumulate over time which will slowly destroy your reputation which will then decrease sales. By taking the aligning approach you'll create a loyal customer base of happy customers which will leave great reviews and promote your company via word of mouth (which is the best marketing approach).

(These are just my thoughts, not an official representation of any authority on the matter. Some of the terms presented here use my own idiosyncratic definitions and may have different meanings elsewhere. It's also not at all a comprehensive view on the topic but only a rough summary based on my limited understanding.)
 
I've spent the past year or so really trying to wrap my head around the essence of Tier 2 cognition (starting at Yellow), namely systems thinking. Just these past 6 months, after taking some courses in communication theory and community psychology, I've gotten some insights into the matter that really solidified my previous intuitions which I'd like to share here. I was truly surprised of how much these two fields were based on systems theory (mainly the theories of Gregory Bateson and Urie Bronfenbrenner respectively, although these two theorists only serve as lightning rods for the vast meta-theoretical space that is systems thinking).

I'll open up with a quote from each of the aforementioned theorists:

What these quotes have in common is that they emphasize relationships or interconnections. That is what a system is: a collection of relationships. But isn't it the case that anybody can understand concepts such as "relationships", "interconnections" and "systems"? What makes systems thinking so special? Now, you could actually argue that systems thinking itself isn't necessarily confined to Tier 2. However, I'll say that Tier 2 cognition consists of something called a "mature systems view." It's about a way to view the world; a worldview, and it's of a certain sophistication or maturity. To truly understand this worldview, we must first contrast it with a more common worldview, which I will call "analytical thinking."
 
Analytical thinking

Fritjof Capra, a pillar of the mature systems view, refers to this worldview and way of thinking as the "Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm." It's characterized by reductionism, mechanism, atomism and positivism. The Cartesian method approaches understanding the world by breaking it down into smaller components (reductionism). Newtonian mechanics describes the world as force interactions between physical objects that consist of atoms (mechanism, atomism). Positivism refers to the idea that we can formulate consistent laws based on this type of knowledge (e.g. "laws of physics").

Another way to think about it is that analytical thinking approaches the world "vertically":


This vertical approach isn't just confined to the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, biology). It's also central to fields like psychology. The analytical tradition of psychology reduces problems down to components within the individual: symptoms, diagnoses, traits, drives, genes, beliefs, values etc. It lays the basis for individual psychotherapy (psychoanalysis, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy etc.), psychiatric medical treatment (antidepressants, anxiolytics etc.), personality psychology (Big 5, MBTI etc.), cognitive psychology (e.g. Beck's schema theory) etc. Jordan Peterson is a big proponent of this view.

On the other hand, there is a systemic tradition within psychology called community psychology. It emphasizes relationships, connections and environmental factors when solving problems (social, economic, political, cultural etc.). Not coincidentally, Jordan Peterson is not a big fan of this approach. Without making this any more about our beloved JP, let's get straight to it: what is systems thinking?
 
Systems thinking

In contrast to reductionism, mechanism, atomism and positivism, systems thinking is relational, holistic, ecological and organic. 

A system is a collection of relationships between units, and holism is about focusing on the whole. Taking a systems view is about seeing the interplay as a whole, not just the individual units for themselves. The bigger the system view, the greater and more inclusive the whole becomes, and the more holistic it becomes. Ecology is about understanding the relationships between organisms and their environment, and an organism is an interplay of smaller living units ("organs" or organic units). Systems in nature and society are complex and can be described using different concepts from systems theory (e.g. "transaction", "self-organization", "adaptation", "feedback" etc.).

In contrast to the vertical nature of analytical thinking, systems thinking is "horizontal":

 
This picture represents a social system, however the horizontal principle applies to other systems as well: organ systems, cells, molecules, atoms etc.). These are «real systems» (natural/social systems). You also have abstract systems (e.g. scientific theories, ideologies, value systems, meta-systems, paradigms, meta-theories etc.), and that's where things like construct awareness come into play (more on that later).

Meta-theories are "theories about theories", which try to understand how abstract systems work through meta-systematic observations. Fields like philosophy of science and models like Spiral Dynamics and Integral theory are examples of such meta-theories. Model of hierarchical complexity (MHC) is a good model to understand the different levels of abstract systems (e.g. "how complex is a paradigm?").
 
Context awareness, Construct awareness and Theory pluralism.
I've already mentioned construct awareness, which is one of three main facets that I think are useful to further understand systems thinking:

 
Context awareness refers to the general ability to understand the pervasive nature of relationships in the world: the vast array of relationships across different domains (physical, biological, social etc.). Any individual unit exists within a larger context (their environment or the larger system), and being aware of context is synonymous with a general form of system awareness.

Bronfenbrenner's Ecological systems theory is a good illustration of context awareness:

 
Construct awareness is the ability to the understand the relationship between the human and the world with respect to making sense of the world (knowledge, sensemaking and epistemology) and how it's a process of constructing abstract systems. People may manipulate these abstract systems without understanding how they work, e.g. what kind of system it is, how it's made, and how it relates to other systems, which would be an exercise in construct blindness. For example, it's possible to operate a car without knowing how it was made or how the engine works. To not be aware of how abstract systems work to construct your reality is to have a lack of construct awareness.

Thomas Kuhn and his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is a good example of construct awareness. After performing a meta-theoretical study on the historical development of science, he concluded that all scientific theories at all times are validated relative to a historically contingent framework of philosophical assumptions (a paradigm, a collection of constructs), and thus all scientific knowledge is fundamentally relational in nature. So not only are the external aspects of human behavior dependent on context (as in social interactions; Bronfenbrenner), but also the internal aspects (mind). If we go back to Gregory Bateson, in his systemic communication theory, he in fact defines "context" not as something external, but as an internal psychological framework. He does this because of the insight that the mind is constructing the external world. Alfred Korzybski's "the map is not the territory" is also a staple of construct awareness.
 
With enough context and construct awareness, you'll inevitably end up with theory pluralism: the ability to explore and understand a wide range of different abstract systems (theoretical frameworks). In a sense, theory pluralism is both a prerequisite and a consequence of construct awareness (they're co-created). However, to really develop a wide knowledge of theory, you must have a deep meta-theoretical understanding which is able to see the larger picture – the essence of construct awareness. Ken Wilber is a great ambassador for theory pluralism. His vision of integrating all domains of knowledge into a single, comprehensive framework is the pinnacle of systems thinking. Fritjof Capra should also be mentioned here with his book "the Tao of Physics", where he not only makes profound observations about context and construct in his writings about Quantum Mechanics, but he also makes theoretical comparisons to Taoism and non-duality.
 
I mentioned earlier regarding having a "mature systems view" that systems thinking is not necessarily confined to Tier 2 cognition. This is because Green is very open to context awareness and will easily appreciate models like Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory. What Green struggles with the most is construct awareness. It might be able to deconstruct a lot of Orange systems, both from a rational place and an intuitive place, but it struggles to pick up the pieces, both theoretically and practically. Construct awareness also makes you more prone to grasping the concepts in systems theory, which unlocks key concepts like the meta-theoretical evolutionary lens (Beck & Cowan, Wilber, Kuhn), which Green crucially lacks.
 
So that is the gist of it, but there is so much more I could talk about, e.g. the history of systems theory (deep ecology, cybernetics, Gestalt psychology etc.) and different systems theory concepts like I've alluded to earlier. There are also other aspects of Tier 2 cognition that could be expanded upon, like the ability to hold paradox, understanding holarchies, or different real-life applications (that's a big one). I would anyways like to hear what you guys have discovered about systems thinking that I've left out. I would never turn down the opportunity to deepen my theory pluralism  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Additional notes and clarifications:
Expanding on this:
 
Analytical thinking and systems thinking must not be thought of as diametrical opposites, but as generally expressing different dimensions of movement through abstract systems (vertical vs. horizontal). Neither of them are pure expressions of either "vertical" or "horizontal" thinking, because technically all abstract thought utilizes both dimensions to navigate the cognitive landscape. An alternative description could be hierarchical movement vs. cross-hierarchical movement. The categories explored in hierarchical movement tend to have a corresponding familiarity or similarity of kind, while the ones in cross-hierarchical movement have corresponding distance or diversity of kind (in that it's possible to have many qualitatively very different things interacting with each other in a system).
 
One reason why horizontal movement tends to be more readily associated with complexity might be due to the relative simplicity of postulating it abstractly, because meanwhile it's possible to have interactions between many qualitatively different things, it doesn't actually necessitate or force a qualitative difference (e.g. you can simply have interactions between many molecules of the same kind), meanwhile a comparably complex vertical scenario is much harder to postulate, as the different levels of a hierarchy always forces a degree of difference (e.g. molecule > atom > sub-atomic), and thus most abstract hierarchies tend to be simpler (because models are supposed to simplify). In other words, the tendency towards horizontal complexity could simply be a bias of abstraction, and that in reality, systems are equally infinitely complex across all dimensions, both vertically and horizontally. Thinking is nevertheless about abstraction, and therefore horizontal thinking serves as a litmus test for complex thinking.
 
So from this alternative view, what is systems thinking? Well, the more you refine your general ability to abstract both vertically and horizontally across categories (symbols, concepts, classes and domains), the more expansive and complex your thinking becomes. Therefore, the proclivity towards the mature systems view simply depends on the size and complexity of one's perspective. Horizontal thinking is nevertheless generally an indicator of complex thinking.

Green longing for Turquoise.

4:30 wake up, no drugs, nofap, 20 pages of a book a day, no electronics except for work, clean diet 3-4k calories, mass training every other day, 1-2 hours meditation. With the goal of making 25K cyall in november. 

This is a recording of our session. If you want a sense of what the session is like this can be helpful.
https://meetings.dialpad.com/getmp3/AMIfv959B6ayM0aAOQCjYSYFhs_Fhp59fdpAIaILB9bw9yVYMdMdKwf6TsyKBocyVigXbe60QVvyUtszNeEENCxQaKQWmLbFR90eLdJXy9slRdKBEaSu_ObSTa9sn0NRPIdd4NddZGqw6kWxwwmvLEauPx8DNDfLZQ.mp3
@UnbornTao I think this is a great resource as well

I really like teachers who talk about non duality and the importance of our own conscious presence. 
So teachers like Rupert Spira, Loch Kelly, and Ekkart Tolle. My favorite teachers is Rumi.
I've recently gotten into this PUA dating coach John Elite. He has a lot of incredibly insightful things to say about a lot of topics. And I think there is a subset of spiritual seekers who would be better off listening to this guy, then more conventional teachers

Mind you, I’m not psychic. But this is what the cards seem to reflect.
With all the reversals, I get a potential sense of stagnation in your work path, spirituality, and creative drive.
But fear not. There are stars in each of the cards... and the middle card is actually called “The Star”.
So, my recommendation is, if you face with blocks or stagnation, find your own “North Star” once again. 
The Hermit is a good archetype to help you turn inward and find your own North Star.

Any appeal to ancestral diet is redundant by default in the current day and age. Natural selection always favours the most immediate survival to achieve a state of reproduction over longevity and disease avoidance. This is called hypothesis of antagonistic pleiotropy (the theory is of course way more complicated than that). The genes responsible for the ability to produce offspring even at the cost of decline of longevity and rapid ageing would be favoured by the evolution. 
Basically whatever the ancient people ate, would have favoured the immediate survival and prevention of death before was one able to mate and reproduce. It was also literally anything that was available at that time. Mostly plants in spring and summer and mostly meat in autumn and winter once foraging would have become impossible. After offspring has been produced, what happened to the previous generation (once offspring achieved the age of self-dependence) was not important. 
We have now moved past that. Infant mortality is less than 0.5% and most people will live beyond the age of peak reproduction achieving longevity that would not have been possible or achievable thousands of years ago when our ancestors lived. And so whatever they ate at that time is completely irrelevant to our diet today. We have moved past antagonistic pleiotrophy and over generations, the genes favouring longevity has been switched on more and more as we have achieved abundance of resources and food never before available so the body does not have to be in state of perpetual survival anymore. Ofcourse this also means other genes sich as those of more pro-oncogenic states have also been switched on as well as those responsible for aggressive detoxification and cellular proliferation such as NRF2, mTOR, Pi3K and all the other fancy names that are sometimes linked to chronic disease simply because our lifestyle is so so different to what would have been 10,000 years ago, yet another reason why ancestral diets have nothing to do with that we should eat today. 
Rather than appealing to our ancestry which was driven 100% by short term survival we should take advantage of the research we have today into a variety of food categories that helps us determine which food groups help prevent the most fatal of all diseases (means diseases that kill 8 out of 10 people) which is heart disease, cancer and diabetes. That data we have albeit sometimes inconsistent show that there is a clear indication that mostly plant-based diets with an abundance of fruits, vegetables, legumes and wholegrains are the best diets for chronic disease prevention and all-cause mortality reduction. Whether one decides to include sources of saturated fats (such as meat or eggs) is an individual choice however at very small amounts it appears (at least based on the evidence today) that they do not contribute to negative health outcomes. In small amounts. 
Once that threshold is crossed , disease risk rises pretty much immediately. 
Of course this does not take into account alcohol, smoking, toxins, sugar and junk food and trans fats which everybody pretty much agrees on that they are harmful. 

Here is a couple of book lists I found online.
Orange/Green basic productivity/self help book list:
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/my-best-book-recommendations/
Blue/Orange entrepreneur/success book list:
https://www.patrickbetdavid.com/52-books-for-entrepreneurs/
Favorite books from various successful people:
http://favobooks.com/index.php?start=15
List of all books ever mentioned on Tim Ferriss podcast, filtered by guest:
https://www.booksoftitans.com/list/

I have been enjoying the conscious media resource library at Conscious Awakening Collective or www.coawco.com

Meta-source as in sites or wikis or dictionaries or people pulling from a bunch of other sources and a wide range of disciplines. 
 
http://changingminds.org
I found this to be a great resource thus far, reaching a lot of topics from learning to business, persuasion, storytelling, strategy, creativity and much much more (it’s enormous).
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/
 
Here’s for example Joseph Campbell’s ten commandments of reading stories.
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/telling_stories/campbell_commandments/campbell_commandments.htm

Hey there,
Today I was reading Ken Wilber's The Religion of Tomorrow book and I was struck with so much gratitude for you @Leo Gura... it's just a gift that I'm even able to understand almost everything that this book says. You have given me so much and I just felt like sharing some love with you. 
I noticed that I have never shared many precious gifts that I have found along my path with y'all, in an area that I think the actualized.org crew is needing lots of resources, which is relationships (my life's purpose is to teach people how to have conscious, authentic, healthy relationships - I'm a therapist). 
So here we go, the best resources I have found after years of pursuing this relationship path:
Best teachers + books + seminars (stage yellow/turquoise)
https://www.learningloveinstitute.com/
https://www.learningloveinstitute.com/portfolio/books-2/
OTHER HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BOOKS: https://www.learningloveinstitute.com/books-we-recommend/ (great books on sexuality and tantric practices - life-transforming)
I have tears in my eyes just thinking about these two teachers: Krishnananda & Amana... this is love at its purest. I hope some of you have the opportunity of meeting these teachers, they are the most loving human beings I have ever met. Their teachings are deeply rooted in non duality (they lived with Osho for many many years - they have a very interesting life's story). Even though they call Osho their master, they are the 1st ones to say "Osho was full of shit in many situations".
I recommend to start by reading their book: Face to Face with Fear – Transforming Fear Into Love or Stepping out of Fear – Breaking Free of Pain and Suffering.
They try to communicate in a very simple way and give people very simple models for healing. 
You can solve ANY relationship problem you have in a therapy session with either of them, which costs something around $170. Another amazing thing about them is how their business doesn't revolve around money, their seminars and sessions are fairly cheap compared to most teachers.
I cannot recommend this work enough. THIS IS GOLD!
Best way to practice authentic relating based on meditation and find a community of people that you can feel deeply connected to
https://integralcentered.com/aletheia/ + https://integralcentered.com/ken-wilber-on-authentic-relating/ (Ken Wilber's take on authentic relating)
https://www.circlinginstitute.com/circling/what-is-circling/
https://www.circlingeurope.com/what-is-circling
https://circleanywhere.com/
I highly recommend circling. It's an amazing way to see your relational blind spots, to feel absurdly connected to other human beings, learn communication tools and etc. It has it's some pitfalls, like not exploring trauma and how to heal wounds, but it's an amazing tool to growth.
A good introductory book on circling: Circling and authentic relating - Marc Beneteau (even though the author is fairly undeveloped).
Most big cities have a live circling group these days that you can attend.
Other good resources
Podcasts (yellowish): https://relationshipschool.com/podcast/ and https://www.neilsattin.com/relationshipalive/  (there are some false teachings in these podcasts, but many useful teachings and resources).
Relationship courses + trainings: https://relationshipschool.com/dpir/ - I have been studying with this teacher for the last 2 years. I have spent $25k on his courses and I find them to be a very good base for a healthy relational life. He's mostly yellow, but he's still very stuck in some orange toxicity IMO - he can be very manipulative, greedy and etc. I have done trainings with him because the most recommended teachers - learningloveinstitute - don't offer programs as he does. I still highly recommend this material (especially if you are still in orange or green), but you should know that some of the stuff that he teaches is based on falsehood IMO. I'm leaving this teacher soon and completely focusing on the Learning Love Institute one's.
Another downside is that it's very expensive.
Other interesting authors and books:
Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the path of liberation - Bruce Tift (yellow+turquoise)
Mindsight - Daniel J Siegel
Gabor Maté
...
There are many more that I could list here, but I actually think it's best for all of you to focus on the ones that I have already mentioned (too much information can be distracting). All the people that these 2 podcasts interview can be good resources.
 
@Leo Gura if you are open for feedback: I think that the relationship books in your list are pretty bad lol , which makes sense because you were mostly on stage orange when you created this list (I think).
The way of the superior man: this book can be very shaming in my opinion and is male chauvinist (even though I loved it when I read it years ago and it has some beautiful insights). My perception today is that it has very poor relationship teachings. Chapters like: Don't force the feminine to make decisions, Praise her, What she wants is not what she says, Her complaint is content-free, She wants to relax in the demonstration of your direction and etc are pretty bad (very blue/orange). Real relational teachings teach you to be with your wounds and emotions, there's very little of that here. I think Deida is a case of someone that maybe has done lots of waking up (maybe not even that), but hasn't done much growing up.
The 5 Love languages: IMO this is stage blue relationship garbage... the 5 love languages are actually feeding people's egos/shame in most situations. Even though it has a "positive effect" in the short-run, it feeds falsehood in the long run. Example: someone's love language is Words of Affirmation - if you go deep enough, you'll see that the person was traumatized into thinking that he/she is only worthy, lovable when receiving compliments from other people. It's like telling a model that she's beautiful, she'll feel good about it, but it's feeding her shame instead of dealing with it.
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus / The 7 Principles That Make Marriage Work / He's Just Not That Into You - these books are very orange and don't give actual tools for people to heal their relational wounds and move towards healthy relationships.
Let me know how this lands for you! 
 
If anyone has questions or wants more suggestions and advice, let me know!
Relationships are such an incredible way to deal with our shadows, especially long term partnerships. And of course, such an important part of life that cannot be avoided. I hope this helps some of you to grow up in the relational area of your lives. 
Lots of love fellow seekers,
Gabriel.