Unexpectedly great video on levels of consciousness, spiral dynamics, susan cook-Greuter's developmental levels models and AQAL by Ken wilder
 
He made this simplified chart too, overall probably some of the best consciousness video I've seen outside of Leo's work 
 
 

God is breathing. 
 
"When you really look for me,
you will see me instantly —
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath."
~Kabir

It is really crazy, I downloaded TikTok and was using it for a while, naturally the spiritual stuff started to come up. Every second dude was claiming to be enlightened talking shit about some ascension bullshit, being a starseed, tarot, conspiracies blahblahblah..... I almost went retarded watching this stuff. Although Leo claims they are not awake, the value of the traditional teachers such as Mooki, Ekhart Tolle, Ralston, Ram Dass etc.. simply cannot be understated because they are not stage green idiots claiming to be enlightened.

People seem to be getting into Kriya Yoga after my video, and lots of questions are coming up, so I thought it would be best to accumulate them all in one place.
Post all your Kriya Yoga questions and tips here.
Over time this should become a valuable resource for people. Similar to our monstrously large 5-MeO-DMT Mega-Thread.
Feel free to share your advice, tricks, and progress reports. If we have a lot people doing Kriya, it would be cool to see how many people start experiencing gains and mystical experiences, and how quickly. It would be awesome if we had like 100 people post a progress report after 3, 6, and 12 months of practice. In the name of pseudo-science

There are levels, reading fiction is sure an upgrade from movies, YouTube and those type of activities, it would sure immerse you, improve your attention span, make you get in flow, have real joy rather than dopamine spikes.

But there is more value in reading non fiction, maybe it doesn't get you to the same level of immersion, but it includes all others and more, you learn so much and understand more about the world.

If you are engaged in movies, tv shows, etc. I would say its a great upgrade, very worth it, but it is also a matter of value, how much do you value knowledge and understanding?

You can also balance it out, you can read a heavy non fiction book and a fiction book at the same time, you would specify time for the heavy non fiction book, and for the rest of the day you would read the fiction book whenever you feel like it.

Damn, sorry guys sometimes I can't help it and that inner marketer just comes out. Now that I have your attention, I was seeking some advice about life in general and spirituality. There are a lot of things I am trying to make sense of but struggling with and I would greatly value your input. (P.S I put the text through ChatGPT but only to make it a clearer as my writing was all over the place).
I've been pondering the whole deal about spiritual teachers and authority. So, I tried this thing that you might wanna check out too. I went on a YouTube marathon, checking out different teachers - some super advanced like Krishnamurti, Ram Dass, Mooji, Sadhguru, Ralston, and more. Then, I lurked around some 'stage green' friends (can't stand them for some reason) and even went through the comments of other YouTubers delving into the black pill and red pill stuff, and also random folks. What hit me was kinda disappointing: loads of what I call 'meatriders' in the comments. The top comments were often just blindly praising these folks, whether it was about someone like Tristan Tate talking nonsense or glorifying Sadhguru as the ultimate yogi. Made me think about the risk of blindly following these teachers and groups. It also made me question my own judgment and everybody else's.
So, in my own life, following Sadhguru and his yoga has brought amazing changes. It's seriously been life-altering for me. But to fully get into his teachings, I had to trust him in a kind of delusional way. He made certain Yantras, and I accessed them directly through some delusional devotional practices. Felt like I was becoming one of those people in the comments I've been critical of. But even though it felt weird, I gained a lot from these practices.
Here's the thing: if I hadn't put that level of trust in his teachings, I doubt I would've made as much progress. But then again, most teachers, like Leo, push for having no authority and seeking absolute understanding yourself while maintaining strong skepticism. So, how do I make sense of these two ideas? It's a tricky one because there are legit teachers and, well, not-so-legit ones, so it requires caution. But how do I tell the difference? And now that I've found success with Sadhguru's teachings, can I keep going and reach the deepest levels of consciousness? Trust is important here, if I did not trust Sadhguru, I would not have transformed, anytime I brought in my logical mind to contemplate, there was a reduction in efficacy especially in the devotional practices and Yantras. At the same time, this level of trust is blind, it really is and I wonder would it become inhibitory as I continue? All input welcome!!

Perhaps the trigger is not niceness or its lack, but fakeness.
If someone's nice and it's their authentic expression - no problem with that.
If someone's not nice and it's their authentic expression - no problem either. It's even not registered as 'not nice'. I see it as a quirk, and a very attractive one. (Take Peter Ralston.)
What I think is problematic is when someone acts out a behaviour that is not authentic to them and sticks to it because they think it will get them something.
Sure you met 'asshole' gurus who put on the whole act of assholeness just to prove to you how beyond niceness they are.
 
 

Love this quote by Krishnamurti
"Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority" 

A beautiful older movie based on the story of Thomas More in 16th century England, who refused to publicly approve of King Henry the eighth divorcing his wife and remarrying. (spoiler alert) He held up his silence unwaveringly until they executed him.
The whole film is gleaming with integrity and there is an especially beautiful scene towards the end when his daughter begs him to just do as the king demands, he tells her: 'you hold your self in your hands like water. Now when you lie it is as if you opened your hands; and don't expect to find yourself easily again.'
I'm not sure if that movie fits in this section as it is not explicitly a spiritual teaching, but it is a very moving display of integrity.
I couldnt find a video of the scene I was referring to so here's another good one to give an impression:
It's on Netflix btw. Enjoy and feel free to discuss

Poetry uses implicit and intuitive structures, which can be an elegant way of communicating, but it can also be prone to misinterpretation (due to the lack of explicit precision). Imo, an elegant use of poetry generally requires a refined sense of context awareness, e.g. knowing the person you're talking to and their past experiences, how their mind works, what they're feeling and thinking in the moment, etc.
Truly intuitive people (e.g. "real" spiritual gurus) can touch your soul with so little words, because they know so much about you by just looking at you or observing your behavior. In fact, when your context awareness (and just general awareness) becomes extremely refined, I believe you can see the karmic footprint of somebody just by glancing at their eyes. That is where you get stories like Ram Dass meeting his guru and discovering that he essentially knew everything about him (e.g. that his mother had just passed away), or Sadhguru (jokingly) recalling his experience in school (paraphrasing: "I was paying so much attention to the teachers that I could see their past, present and future").
And you can certainly see moderate versions of this in your own life: you know very well when somebody is sad just by looking at them, and if you by some second clue (or multiple) can derive a possible explanation, and if it happens to be true, then you have effectively read their karmic footprint. In that sense, "psychic abilities" are just extreme versions of normal psychological phenomena (e.g. affective empathy, seeing patterns, logical inferences, etc.).
One example from my personal life (which wasn't confirmed, but it still illustrates my point): at one point during my degree, I noticed that one of the lecturers suddenly called in sick a large number of times. Already then, I thought something must have happened. And then the few times I saw her after that, I couldn't help but feel that she was very sad, in strict contrast to how she used to be. The conclusion that popped up in my head was that someone near her had passed away. Again, I don't know that this was the case (I also had other theories, like a breakup, or just general stress from teaching while pursuing a PhD), but you can see how an extremely refined ability to pick up on such signs and draw true conclusions could lead you to be labelled a psychic.
Of course, there are alternative explanations of psychic abilities that rely less on explicit signs like how somebody looks or their emotional state (e.g. that it's possible to merely download information about someone you've never even seen or met by pure intention). But in either case, the way you arrive at a conclusion is equally interesting in my opinion.

You need to know the shit you talk about. That makes a huge deal.
Also don't get fooled by what you see. I bet Leo does plenty of preparation and organizing work for his videos.
Get to know your shit first, then have the courage and resilience to practice regularly. 
And remember, when it comes to communicating and articulating yourself, there will always be good days and bad days.
 
 

The only way out is through.
You can make use of capitalism to build yourself a decent life. That's what everyone has to do. You shouldn't expect government to just give you a good life. Turn yourself into a massive value provider. You can make good money in this system if you are hardworking and highly creative.

I have seen the importance of videos of being a teenager and the advice for young people video, However the question still remains what are important things to do in mid 20s I am 26 and relatively financially stable and I do not need to worry about work right now. Forgetting about COVID - what would you recommend for me to do other than to find my life purpose obviously and to explore the world.
 
my daily routine looks like this: (with some procrastination here and there)
 
meditation yoga + grounding life purpose course breath work violin/guitar reading / researching / reading forums swimming/hiit/mma visualisation

Ok, I see what you mean, it has been a feature of Soviet-block countries. And it didn't work at all. One can argue that these countries have had enormous growth during that time, so the system was working and their worse situation compared to West Germany for example could be attributed to worse war damage and no Marshall's plan money (Stalin rejected the money).
Yet, the fall of the block is an indisputable proof that there have been deeper problems. The system had problems with effectively using it's wealth, I mean Russia is still one of the wealthiest countries in the world when it comes to natural resources, but its economy doesn't match this wealth.
The capitalist system has had agents that were wasting resources and successfully using economy's potential. The soviet countries has been uniformly wasting resources. Although, I believe it's not a problem which is necessarily connected with socialism as you defined it now, because I can imagine independent public institutions with a lot of power that successfully distribute funding towards various enterprises.
I am not proposing implementing such system any time soon, it would be a stage Yellow system and it would require a lot of careful sketching of ideas, development of bureaucracy methods and education, because for it to work, the workers would need to be educated and voice their needs, no more no less, I mean their needs as representatives of the enterprises they work at.
The world is too obsessed with points, pointless metrics and money chasing for it to work. Maybe the point at which academia grows up out of this stupid attitude and develops more enlightened ways of operating, maybe then we can start thinking about implementing something like this politically. Because if PhDs can't make a socialist work environment for themselves then no-one can.

But the best way to win someone's trust is by being honest and not wearing dozen of masks. So it's still pays to be honest.

A groundbreaking philosopher & (in my opinion) the most important biologist alive have an amazing discussion about Michael's work and the parallels/implications with ontological idealism. I really, really enjoyed this one - some really  thought-provoking gems in there!
 
 

Hey so I'm a college student and recently I got caught for academic misconduct and I don't know what the punishment is yet. It's probably going to be on my personal record forever, and as a pre-med this is a big rest in peace. To be honest, I wasn't dead set on studying medicine in the first place so right now I'm not TOTALLY freaking out about this, although I did throwup a couple of times. I guess I'm just looking for some general advice from y'all actualized people right now, because the last time I was traumatized was a heartbreak and actualized.org saved me. You guys see the big picture in things so yea, I just want some words to help me get over the initial shock? General college / career advice could help as well.
Thanks so much

You can try to talk to S and offer to strike a bargain with him where you two agree to stay out of each other's way and then you will tell your family you back off.
You and S should try to negotiate some rules of engagement and behavior. You should brainstorm what you want these rules to be before you talk to S.

@Matthi This is an opportunity for you to grow socially, to learn to be comfortable around other people. That is necessary for your future regardless.
Try this exercise: go deliberately be around other people, and when that happens, consciously try to relax your body and mind. Don't think about anything, don't tense your body, and just be at ease as other people are around you. And keep doing that. You don't even have to talk to them. If they talk to you, you can tell them that you just want some space to relax and meditate.

Well, there is Coursera, Edx, Udemy, Udacity, Khan Academy. Lynda and more.
For me, I took more of Coursera and Edx to get some accreditions/minor diplomas or certificates but they ultimately don't seem any useful in my job search because company will still look at your main degree etc only.
Peterson still has a huge ego when he called his academy under his name. Why not called it 'Novel Academy' or something?

If you guys are just looking for basic college ed classes by top-notch professors on the cheap in video format, that already exists:
https://www.thegreatcourses.com
It will takes Peterson over a decade to generate as many courses as the above already has.

Im not saying or claiming its impossible to have enlightenments or awakenings or that one shouldn't go for it - Im just suggesting epistemic humility which people here clearly lack - in other words be open to the possiblity that you can be wrong.
Thats why you can see a lot of people here acting as teachers and all-knowers all the time rather than actually acknowledging the limitations to methods .
A lof of people here are making a lot of assumptions but they try hard not to see those as assumptions even though they have to take them for granted.
You can cut through a lot of bullshit by asking "why" and "how do you know that" on a loop, repeatedly to this people and you will see how even though epistemically similar their approaches are - a lot of their conclusions are different.
A lot of guessing about other peoples developmental level (as if anyone would have some objective standard to go by - which people clearly don't have - they just go by self-referentiality [or in other words by the experience and knowledge that they think to be true])
There is clearly a lot of ego involved in all this which distorts everything very greatly. A lot of emotional attachment to certain methods, huge emotional attachment to the idea that one is more conscious compared to others, huge emotional attachment to 100% confidence in your core claims (people here need the feel of that psychological safetiness, otherwise they open themselves  up to the possibility , where their whole world can fall apart)
 
Notice what people argue about here all the time: "I have a bigger enlightenment dick than you" " I am more conscious than you" "your method is limited compared to mine" - when it comes to Leo , he is making a lot of claims about methods that he is guessing about at best, but he won't acknowledge that he is guessing - he will present it as if it would be absolutely true.
So for instance, he will present the idea of doing meditation to reach his current knowledge as either laughable or structurally limited, even though he is using his limited understanding and logic to reach his conclusion (that meditation is structurally limited) and he hasn't gone through 40-50 years of intense meditation work - so he uses mental masturbation and inductive reasoning to make a definitive claim about something without verifying it himself through experience. He might say "okay, but no one can verify all the methods at that depth and length" - sure, but then don't make definitive claims about it  and again have some epistemic humility and say: "To the best of my knowledge right now here is my take on this x method" but don't die on the hill with such claims.
 
 
 
The time here anyone accepts infinite consciousness as a possibility - is the time, where constant recontextualization opens up, which will undermine your previous thoughts and knowledge about everything as you become more conscious.  Leo will say: "no no  it won't negate it , it will include it" - even in that case you should go with epistemic humility all the time , but there are things that contradicts the claim of " it won't negate it , it will include it".
So for example, if there is a person who says God doesn't exist and then he becomes a person who says God does exist, in that case there is the negation of ' God doesn't exist' and the undermining of your previous thoughts and metaphysics going on rather than an inclusion.  Or a different example could be a person switching a materialist paradigm to 'everything is consciousness' paradigm - that case there is a clear negation of the materialist paradigm going on there - you negate the idea that the materialist metaphysics is true. So those two examples clearly demonstrates not just the fact that greater consciousness will undermine your regular knowledge about things, but greater consciousness can undermine your ideas about the structure and nature of reality and yourself, therefore having a 100% confidence in your own metaphysics according to this - is not a good idea, because  there is a possibility that it will be undermined in the future as you gain more consciousness.
So the conclusion is that if you believe that 'you can always become more and more conscious no matter how conscious you are right now', then you also have to accept the possibility that your deepest ideas about yourself and about reality and about consciousness can be undermined later as you become more conscious compared to your previous self. So the idea of any of you having 100% certainty in your metaphysics is irrational and opens up you to be deluded.
 

Do you understand that it usually takes an intellectual years to develop and publish ground-breaking new theory?
Go look at how long it took Darwin to develop evolution.

This is the reading list Ralston sent me for the apprenticeship what do you think any questions or comments would be appreciated.
Ralston's books:
The Book of Not Knowing (required reading)
Pursuing Consciousness (required reading)
The Genius of Being (required reading)
Zen Body-Being (required reading)
Consciousness Dialogues (required reading)
Ancient Wisdom, New Spirit
Reflections of Being
Other Educational Possibilities: (if you have time)
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Suzuki
Actualizations, Stewart Emery
On Time and Being, Heidegger
The Knee of Listening, Franklin Jones (Bubba Free John)
Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson
The Way of Chuang Tzu, Merton
Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu
The Book of Tea
Zen in the Art of Archery
Critique of Pure Reason, Kant (difficult)
Some others:
The Journey to Ixtlan, Castenada
@Leo Gura

If you were to do a psychological study of mindfulness, you start by finding someone's general definition of it. Most scientists seem to use Jon Kabat Zinn's definition: "Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally".
Then you need to find an operational definition, which is a little more specific. For mindfulness, it's most common to think of it as either a trait (relatively stable over time), a state (relatively transient) or a practice (e.g. meditation).
Then, you decide how you want to measure it (e.g. using a questionnaire). In the realm of questionnaires, there are many alternatives. The one I used and which is generally most used is the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), which measures trait mindfulness. Other common ones are the Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI).
So you see that already before you've arrived at a measurement, there are many forking paths, which is a part of the problem. If studying human phenomena is already hard in itself, then studying some subtle and nebulous facet like mindfulness is probably even harder.