Ajax

Paradox isn't it? You are moralizing compassion and love. Do you know the difference between punishment and discipline? Disciple is intended to help and punishment is intended to cause pain. You can discipline others with love and kindness with force. As I said it is paradox. I think the reason that people struggle with paradoxes is because they don't have the mental flexibility to see how one idea connects with another, because they are thinking, not seeing/perceiving. I have said it before and I will say it again. Looking is a more intelligent act than thinking.

Try this: Step on broken glass to prove to yourself that you can tolerate pain. (don't actually do that I am just making a point) As long as you even hold the idea of "cheating" you are going to feel pain, cope or lower your consciousness to handle it. Cheating is a negative concept which is a value judgement. Your trust issues are a result of a lower consciousness, it is a personal journey to grow and and directly torturing your ego is not the way to go in my opinion. Listen to the other 3 that gave you advice. Textbook victim mentality. I would recommend listening to Leo's victim videos part 1 and 2.

What do YOU want? I imagine you don't even know which is why you are struggling. If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you always gotten. Don't undo your mindsets, change it toward something else, creating a new reality.

@Falk Leo discussed this previously: I forgot about this one, I came about it by chance on my mp3 player. One thing about these polymaths is that they generally choose creative endeavors for mastery, in that way they can incorporate their interests in their work. I too do dream to be more of a universal genius which is why my mastery target is in writing. It is general enough to incorporate my wide array of interests and I can gain enough experience with it to have an easier transition into more specialized fields of writing if I so chose. The problem as you noted is both time and funds. Most of those "renaissance" men also were either from wealthy families or had wealthy patrons. Therefore, they had nearly all the time they wanted to be studious without the inconvenience of having a "normal job" or having to work. That is why one of your first goals should be discovering a way to generate some sort of income so that you can advance your intellectual pursuits. Fortunately, I was able to solve this problem by creating passive income. I was lucky in that I had family with business/economic backgrounds so I was much more educated in investing and in the art of wise spending. Also, I relocated to my hometown where the cost of spending is impressively low, so I can support myself on the cheap and I can use my funds and time for actualization. Just like Leo said, to get where you want to go... you are going to need an extraordinary amount of time and work into self-education. So the first thing you must do is ensuring you have the time and the work ethic.

I never heard of the man before you mentioned him. Fortunately, he has published books that you can get for less than $20.00. It seems like many of the courses require purchasing the book anyway. Therefore if you are interested in him, I would advise you to get one of those books first before you make up your mind. I just bought one of his books online and am considering purchasing one of his ecourses if I like his book.

There is nothing wrong with having a wide variety of interest, however, they are talking about career-wise. As population increases, competition becomes increasingly fierce. Therefore the person who produces the most valuable products and services are the ones that will be best rewarded. This can only be achieved with mastery. Unfortunately mastery takes so much time and effort to obtain so the more you focus on it, the easier it will be to master. I think that is one reason Leo discussed Lifestyle minimalism.So you can have more free-time to think and creative and spiritual endeavors. However, one should still work consistently to master a skill for a career.

My thoughts exactly. That's why I only go after single ladies. I want a woman who can handle being single, it shows a strong, independent woman...which is something that I admire. She is strong enough to leave if things are not going well in a relationship and is compassionate enough to leave a man with as little hurt as possible. She has such a high level of decency that she will not be double-dealing with you. These are qualities of higher consciousness. High consciousness can and does override instinct. Furthermore, a "Disney" romance or "The One" doesn't exist things get real and the things get tough after a couple of years. It happens to everyone, stormy weather is bound to happen. Our love and relationships are tested in times of trouble and one who is willing to betray their love and partner when life throws challenges is NOT someone who I want by my side. Of course every case and person is different, but as I said in my first post it is something to think about and be aware of. As Cuzzo said, being flighty is instinctual and so the chances are greater that you will get hurt if such instinct is strong in a woman you are courting.

I am not a dater... Carry on with your hot sex, may it make you happy.

I have no prejudice toward such a person, it IS the way of modern humanity. However, betraying a loved one is NOT an ethical solution... the end never justifies the means. If she was really being true to herself, she would leave with out treachery. I may stand alone, but there are women who understand this. I just have high standards. They are out there, though I admit... one may have better luck finding UFO's!

@appleaurorae He is getting into the really advanced stuff now. If you are not ready to hear it... don't worry about it. One day you will. Just do this slowly and gradually. For example, take 20-30 minutes to enjoy your supper. There used to be this thing called "table conversation" where people would just sit and talk and relate sometime for hours at a time. Then they would retire to the den sit by the fire and talk some more. In the south there is an activity called "porch sitting" and it was an open invitation to just sit and visit with your neighbors. In this way the "home" extended past your home into your neighborhood. Unless you have personally experienced this, you wouldn't know what this is like. Here is an example of slowing down in my youth and how it increases productivity. I was often by myself and my parents didn't allow tv in the house. So I had a ball and a basket ball hoop. Since I was by myself and didn't have some sort of contest to play, I slowed down and wasn't trying to make as many basketball shots as possible. Rather I simply focused on practicing on my technique to make the basket. So I might have made one shot a minute, Yet, every shot was slow, deliberate and modified an increasingly evolving technique. I got to the point where I made the shot almost every time. In time my speed increased considerably as my technique improved. And when I played kids at school, I outshot every one there. I didn't have the greatest ball handling skills but boy could I sink those three-pointers. When you say "magick" do you mean "prestidigitation" as in magic tricks. If so, I have a bit of knowledge in that field. The tricks really are simple and repetitive. Most of them rely on slight of hand. Today's magician are woefully deficient in the finer points of slight of hand. They may fool the audience, but they don't fool me. The great magicians of old would spend hours upon hours and days upon days on just a few polished acts. Then they would work on their patter and presence to pad the time between acts. This would also take, days, weeks, months to perfect as well as they were intended to build anticipation. Therefore, much of their "magic" resulted from their "act" not their trick. This was done by working hard but slow. You were perplexed about the working hard-working slow paradox. Why? All too often working slow is hard work. Don't believe me? Try dedicating a few days a week to meditating 5 or more hours a day... Try working 6 hours on one or two magic acts a day. Now, that's HARD WORK. Not physically perhaps but mentally it certainly is. Try this, instead of running one day. Just take a long walk through nature for 2 or three hours. Or go on a hiking trip and instead of just trying to get somewhere... Stop and smell the roses... Watch the murmuring of the wind through the pines, the cool gentle breeze on your skin, the joyful melody of song-birds. The wide variety of colors in the sky and on the ground and in the life. The veins and pattern on the leaves... have you taken the time to see and experience any of these things. You say you got places to go and things to see. But have you truly looked and experienced these things you are in such a hurry to visit? Could it be that you were in such a hurry to get to the next thing that you missed out on so much beauty for you to see?

The essence of what you are is a creator. Therefore, you have to honestly ask yourself, what is it that you want to create? It should be something with long lasting value and can allow you to express yourself and contribute to society. What is your vision for your life? What do you see yourself doing after 40-50 years. If those activities contribute to your vision, add it... if not, subtract it. If you don't have a vision/direction to go... then you already know your next step work on that. Sorry I didn't provide you specific answers, however, it is your life and your creation... no one should paint on your canvass that you are painting. In short, it is your creation.. your choice.

I started personal development at age 12 to augment my martial arts. I studied many of the eastern works such as Art of War, Book of 5 Rings, Hagakure, Tao Te Ching, Tao of Jeet Kune Do, etc... It was around this time I started practicing mediation dabbling with performance-visualizations which greatly advanced my skills in martial arts and tournaments. I started to drift away from this in my early/ mid-twenties and into cognitive enhancement(increasing IQ). Throughout the rest of my twenties, I deeply studied western philosophers and scholars such as Will Durant, John Dewey, Voltaire and Plato, just to name a few. About 2 years ago, during a youtube-surfing binge... I discovered Leo by accident. Incidentally, he was talking about the matrix and looked a little to much like cypher so I almost turned him off Anyway, I started to follow his more spiritual videos and it turned me into a new direction. Last month, I parted from my wife and went back to my hometown. Since I only have free time(I have passive income), I purchased Leo’s course and completed it within 5 days and discovered my life’s purpose. This opened up a flood of wisdom and insight...15+ years of theory building started to come together and I have had consistent enlightenment experiences since. I don’t know if I could say I am enlightened but those concepts are effortless for me to grasp. I also have total mastery of my emotions and even though it has been a month of separation from my wife of over 10 years... I have not experienced depression or any other emotion but peace about the whole matter since that experience. So to answer your question, directly... I don’t know. It no longer is a journey for me but a way of being that is how it appears now. I imagine that it will take me less than 5 years to get to enlightenment, if I continue on the same path that I am on. Right now I am in the process of getting through the books that Leo recommended. I don’t do sitting meditations anymore. I do, however, practice “awareness” meditations like early morning or on clear starry nights I go out and just expand my awareness as much as possible noticing and being aware as much as I can. I also do the same things with a long walks where I just "be and perceive"... This has helped me more than more traditional practices like sitting or breathing or inquiring.

In my opinion you should seek an actualized life. It is nearly impossible to commit 100% to enlightenment. There is just too much going on in the world and if you have even the slightest attachment to the material world and you pursue enlightenment, those attachments will hold you back for many years and you will waste so much time. So enlightenment should only be pursued if you really, really want to do it. If you are divided, don't do it because unless you are willing to take very drastic measures, you won't attain enlightenment for a very, very long time and the road will be unnecessarily challenging.

You're progressing just fine. If you recall Leo's description of the 4 stages in his victim video, you will remember that the 2nd stage is the fighter stage. The next stage is the creator stage, so just focus on that one. Keep meditating, reading, thinking, practicing and whatever else you do...you will graduate soon enough. In the meantime, appreciate the accomplishments that come with overcoming the victim stage.

Here is a basic fact about humanity: They like what they understand and they don't like what they don't understand. The reason they don't understand is because they have certain fixed viewpoints and limiting beliefs about something. Now these things are only resolved by self realization and trying to talk about it or explain something will be pointless. It a "teacup is overflowing" kinda deal. Course you gotta realize you can't empty their teacup for them. Therefore, if it bothers you... don't bother trying to explain. Just use the only weapon against misunderstanding that you can, Communication. Of course you know communication is sending and receiving. If you are sending communication sufficiently, then the problem is on the receiving end. Therefore any attempts that you try to communicate should be directed toward discovering the obstructions at the receiving end. This means that instead of talking, you must practice listening. You should be asking probing questions, asking for more details, better explanations, seek clarification, etc... This will accomplish several things. First, it will allow you to see the obstructions for what they are. Therefore you will see that they are based on assumptions. Therefore you won't take their stabs at you so personally. Secondly, it will force them to question their reality and therefore will possible open their mind to new possibilities or at least make them more self conscious about even bringing up the subject with you because they don't want to face the fear about questioning their own reality. You see the reason they are doing this is not because they are malicious... It is because they have this stable reality about life that they constructed by their considerations(fixed viewpoints). It is a false reality and deep down they know it. Therefore, they live in fear that if the truth was revealed, their fragile world would blow apart into a million pieces.(it might be a good idea to rewatch leo's video about lies). Since you know that they are living in fear, you should realize that the things that they do are out of fear. Things done out of fear are not sane, they are insane. Therefore from this angle you should understand that they are acting out of insanity. Reacting to insanity is not a sane thing to do. Hopefully this has helped, my friend

Yes, there are multiple paths that eventually converge at "Truth". I have chosen a path that is considerably different. The basic problem is the same on both ends. The distortion of perception. This distortion is what is preventing us from seeing more truth and becoming free. Let's call this distortion "falseness" Therefore the goal of both of these paths should be eliminating falseness. To the degree that your thoughts and activities depart from this goal, you are off the track. There is a specific thought process that can be used to tackle this problem, but I won't share it because I will not violate the guidelines of this forum and promote a product. You may contact me, privately, if that is your wish.

The mind distortion video is by far my favorite. I recommend that you keep trying to understand it. Here are two videos that really like:

UH, No..they..don't You don't need money to believe in yourself, you don't need any money to exercise and little money to eat decent food, you don't need money to talk to people and you have access to more information and answers than even the greatest geniuses before the 21st century and you are telling me you can't find your life purpose. Life purpose is something from within a self expression, you don't necessarily need money to discover it. You may need money to pursue it but not to discover it. I will repeat a trite old platitude: Excuses are like assholes, everybody has one and they all stink!

@Tomek To have and eat a cookie, one must be willing to make sacrifices that they might not want to make. For instance, you may need to give up capital, to find someone who can take care of your affairs. Additionally, you may find someone in the big city that may be willing and desire a smaller life. Or, you may find a business student who has finished their studies that might want to take a break before they enter the "real world" and managing their business could be an opportunity to manage your business. There are many, many solutions.. Additionally, do you have a plan to create some sort of business in the big city? Or are you so focused on keeping your passive income that you haven't the energy to start creating something new? If you could discover a great opportunity you could find a way to make money doing something you enjoy on a grander scale so that you can drop your previous opportunity. This a " trading your cookie for a better cookie" approach. This may take challenge and sacrifice but if one focuses on the end result, they should be happy. I would have been in a similar situation that you were in, but fortunately. My mother, who taught me everything I knew about business... was happy to take care of my business for me while I lived in the big city. I then created several different opportunities for myself in the big city so everything ran smoothly for me. I had to make sacrifices at first, for instance I lived in a house with many people renting, but the rent was only about 200USD total. I may have skipped a meal or two a few times ... but in the end, it was worth it because I got what I want. I think the secret is having a long-sighted vision.

Thank you, @cly your kind words are most touching. I have learned that one should not only learn from their experiences and try not to repeat them but they must actually look even deeper for hidden truths. It is actually these truths that subtract or add quality to your life and many of your experiences are actually repeats from lessons learned or not learned from these very subtle but powerful truths that are hidden from view. That is how you shave years off of your experience. I wish so much love and blessings your way, cly... take care.

I was thinking of ways to explain paradox a bit more to you, I was tired yesterday and so I don't think I explained it as well as I could have. Imagine holding a ball in the air that is half-blue and half-red. There are there is Joe to the left and there is Sally to the right. You ask, "What color is this ball." Joe say, "red", Sally says "blue". So who is right? To them there is a paradox, because it looks red to Joe and it looks Blue to Sally. Since you see both sides of the ball... it is not a paradox to you because you see the colors and where they fit. Just like the ball, Life has many multi-colored multi-aspect facets to it that change just by perspective. If you can understand what I am telling you then, you understand paradox. Life is not uni-dimensional it has so many dimensions and aspects that only a narrow mind would be could say that it is either one way or the other... See now why Leo is so critical of Rationalism? For your paradox of fixing flaws/accepting them... It is good to view things in this way: Some flaws can not be changed, some flaws are not actually flaws themselves, some flaws are actually advantages in disguise, some flaws require other flaws to be addressed before they can be taken care of, etc.... You see when you look around and try to view the various aspects and view it from different viewpoints, it doesn't quite seem so much like a paradox anymore, does it? I hope that makes some sense to you, vin

@Vinsanity Watch the first 5 minutes of the paradox again. Basically, if something isn't working... adapt and work around it. Try something else and then try again later just like a puzzle. For example, if you are not funny, don't try to force it, work on an aspect that you are better at to compensate such as telling interesting stories or otherwise being a good conversationalist or being a good listener and giving wise advice.

I have known people like you who feel the don't deserve something or someone. It is usually because the have wronged some people and did things the are not proud of. Here is a truth to live by: "when you deny your conscience, you deny your self" Your conscience is not something you have it is you. When you do wrong, you hurt more than others, you hurt yourself, more specifically you crush your ability to be happy and your ability to believe in yourself. First thing first, you must admit that you robbed yourself of your happiness. Then you must develop a high level of integrity which mean you have to create a code of honor that is good and decent and stick to it. You must also nurture your ability to dream and have a vision that you are willing to follow. Finally, knowing that your happiness is determined by your actions directed toward yourself and others, not by what you have or what has happened to you. If you can keep these things with you, I imagine you will be just as fine. Good luck my friend.

Yes, I agree with the two above me. You don't want to be a yo-yo going up and down. Cut the string. Or you will continue to feel the pain and uncertainty. Uncertainty will make you go insane... you need to separate and heal or you won't get better...you will get worse.

actualized1: Assumptions are the devil. You haven't the slightest clue what enlightenment actually is. It doesn't make sense to make up ideas about something you know nothing about. What kind of crazy conclusions can we come up with if we have incomplete/incorrect data about something? How about the world being flat? How about the sun travels around the earth? Even worse, what about the incalculable superstitions that were/are running amuck around this wobbly planet? Real discoveries are made by people who disregard potential ignorance and are not afraid to explore and venture into the unknown despite what may happen. Are you one of those, or not?