TJ Reeves

Everybody hold the fuck up. @Leo Gura Did you just troll us all with what's essentially a koan about the existence of trolls? I did some research on the nature of trolls and found Lyonel Perabo, an icelandic graduate student who focuses on Viking Culture. He had this to say about whether trolls exist: "Originally, Trolls were not Ogre-like monsters living in the forest or the mountain. The word "Troll" referred to humanoid individuals who were seen as particularly removed from civilization, social norms and engaged in dark sorcery. Basically, some king of supernatural social outcast, very often of foreign origin and different ethnic background with a tendency for being ugly, menacing, shifty and possessing rare abilities. That's the more Medieval Troll for you and in that sense, I can tell you that I sometime walk in the streets of Norway and when I spot a particularly odd fellow, I sometimes think "Troll". So in a way, they exist. Not just quite the way people think." We're talking about a troll as simply the name for an 'ugly' sage living in solitude. Since 'ugly' or 'not-ugly' depends on subjective judgment, there's solid possibility that we're all trolls-in-training. I mean really, what are actualized.org followers if not "humanoid individuals who were seen as particularly removed from civilization, social norms and engaged in dark sorcery." Also, as Leo and I discussed earlier, you will see celtic/nordic/maori swirls on your skin as soon as you begin tripping. These swirls are pretty other worldly but can get horrifying if overdone. Open your mind up to the possibility that if you trip out and see yourself in the mirror you might look like what fits the definition of a troll, especially while also doing weird troll-like shit tripping on lichens/mushrooms in a forest. So we can see several views to the nature of Troll: Trolls in the Internet Parlance of 'guy on the internet a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion, often for the troll's amusement. Trolls in the modern parlance of 'wise forest goblin' do not appear in the perception of most sober people most of the time… except that this doesn’t matter because it is an illusion anyway. Trolls in the modern parlance of wise forest goblin' might appear in the perception of open-minded people who trip, get into an otherwise 'altered' state, or may lack certain filters on their perception especially if you look at an older person Trolls in the original parlance do exist as soon as someone who decides to live a life of solitude out in the forest or otherwise just do unusual stuff. Most importantly we can imagine trolls and we are imagination therefore trolls exist. So in Zen fashion, the true answer to the nature of Troll is: *wordlessly points finger at all of you then points away because you do and don't exist the same way trolls do and don't exist* As usual with koans, everybody failed by not contemplating, not being openminded (in this case to the nature of trolls), and not doing some basic goddamn research (in this case googling, I mean the answer literally appeared within the first two lines of a google search). Everybody also failed by seeing existence and non existence as mutually exclusive. The fact that we even argue about this is proof of the overall level of non-development. It shows how much work is necessary. We might want to consider weekly koans. Should next weeks Koan be about whether dogs have Buddha nature? I bet we could get up to 10 pages of discussion about that one -- all of them wrong. "Trolls are silent and wise. They know all is illusion" - Leo Gura.

Everybody knows Morgan Freeman is God. He's also one of the best documentary narrators ever. Whenever a documentary has Freeman, in it, expect greatness. We're talking about hours of great infotainment including: Through the Wormhole Born to Be Wild 3D and March of the Penguins But now I'd to present to you one of Freeman's latest documentaries, The Story of God. In the show, Freeman travels around the world find how most religions perceive life after death, what different civilizations thought about the act of creation and other big questions that mankind has continuously asked. Unlike some other documentaries about God, Freeman's show makes sure to neither criticize nor confirm any of the ideas presented. It also makes sure to explore some lesser known spiritualities. Overall, I highly recommend the series. Their demonstration of the hindu interpretation of the Ganges river's creation is a great example of content presented in a cool way: Below is a link to a playlist of the entire first season: The Kosmic Joke: we're talking about an agnostic atheist who usually plays god going off to look for god in odd places when the answer is that he is God playing an agnostic atheist who usually plays god going off looking for god in odd places. Go figure.

For context: I'd already done 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, and 5 g trips (not in that order) up to that point. 10g was expensive. I hadn't initially planned to take all of it in one go. I took 5g, waited about 45 minutes, and got into a thought loop about how I needed to "go all in". I cracked and took the other 5g. Iyi's speech was a major motivator. Part of my thoughts were about how I was being a pussy for not doing something that even little kids do and how it would be okay because shrooms are a "hyperdimensional technology" meant to give me the truth. Notes: As described earlier, the patterns came up before I made my way to my little chamber of solitude (walk-in closet with a mattress thrown on the floor) In the chamber, things got out of control. It was like regular dreaming except my body was able to move. I'd "snap back" to reality before entering yet another series of crazy dream-reality-thought loops about every 20 minutes. When you take a dose where set and setting don't matter, set and setting matter more than ever in the sense that you don't want to be disturbed while going through dream-reality-thought loops. I was in my apartment with no one to bother me. I don't know how well I would have faired in nature, although I do love tripping in nature. And I'm very sure a trip sitter would not have helped whatsoever -- they're face would horrify me when they're machine-elf skin gets revealed. It was too much for me. Some parts were horrifying. Others were blissful. But it was just too much to process overall. The trip ended with me recognizing that I was everyone and everything. It was this beautiful moment -- I gave my self into the metaphysical matrix of awareness that builds everything... it was like the ultimate orgasm... I totally let go... I let go so much that I fucking peed all over the mattress I laid on, not caring whatsoever. I woke up in a soggy, piss stained mess, wondering what the fuck happened. It felt like a weird dream had passed. It felt less like being renewed and more like waking up from a weird dream after getting drunk. But unlike a dream, where you can easily walk around thinking that it wasn't "real," I had a feeling of "holy shit that was real but all I have is a pissed stained mattress and -$130 in my bank account to prove it..." Final comments: 2.5 g on the mountain behind my house >>>>>>>> 5g in the forest > 1.5 in the chamber > 10 g in my room >>>> 3.5 with a poorly chosen trip sitter its better to take a smaller dose where you can process everything. I don't recommend it. As you'd alluded to in the last video, It's simply too much to process sometimes. I didn't have any crazy insights from the experience until much later when doing research on some of the books recommended. That said, I like your hypothesis that trips weave together such that one trip may just be preparation for a later trip. It certainly holds true for my experiences, at least. Without a doubt, the 10 g trip prepared me for my experiments with 5-meo and high dose LSD.

Man, whenever I see patterns that look like this, I know I'm in for a total mindfuck. This has held true for all of my heavier shrooms and LSD trips. I think the guy below summarizes my expression: The walls have this shape and overall coloration: Its the color and the swirls that kill me. I get sucked into looking at the beautiful colors around me so much that my ego loses itself and I just recognize that I am everything. Another, more accurate representation for these trips: If I trip balls (+10 G mushrooms, +1000 mics LSD) the world starts to swirl even more and look like this. These are the "machine elves" people talk about: And the tribal patterns reveal a face that looks like this, except it's everyone at the same time. Back to the initial comment regarding the maori swirls, what I've come to conclude is that the maori swirls are slightly filtered fractals. You'd once mentioned in your blog how reality is like one balloon sheet that folds itself infinitely -- fractals are the best way to infinitely fold that sheet. Except its a sheet made out of " "! I think that it goes in the following order of filtration: Highly filtered - normal perception slightly less filtered - african/maori/hindu swirls Pretty filtered - "machine elves" Unfiltered - infinite fractals/ totally unfiltered - ????????????? When I see the swirls, I tend to sit myself down in my chamber of darkness/silence to meditate and calm down..... And that's where shit really really really goes crazy. Random Connections get made at a crazy fast rate, images meld with 'regular' perception so that I no longer know which is which. Then a bunch of answers appear. The best representation is this: Except my body explodes too. Just remembering that this is what reality looks like when less or totally unfiltered blows my mind.

I recently struck gold during my research on how to write. Specifically, I found a free E-Course by Dan Harmon on how he structures his stories. But before I go into that, I want to start by emphasizing that story is central to human understanding. Everything you have ever known fits into a web of beliefs through story. Your entire ego is itself a structure of stories you have of your life. We could spend all day trying to get rid of both our limitations and our stories one by one. But the truth is that that will never happen as long as we are still partaking in this dreamed reality. The story of your Life goes infinitely far back, for you have to consider the context for the context for the context within you were born. And even if you do become enlightened you will still have a story for how you did it. More specifically, if you have experienced death and are 'hollow' inside, you still have a story about how it is that you faced death and why it is that such experience might help you or hurt you. You might convince yourself that you don't follow any stories, but that itself is a story. At best then, its better make friends with our stories and not be a slave to them rather than 'get rid of' them. So, if you control your story you control your life. Put another way, story is the central determinant of Grit. And Grit is the central determinant of your ability to thrive spiritually and practically. The Navy seals who get past Hell week do so because of their ability to own their personal stories. Those who don’t quit. The same thing goes for Nazi Prisoners who survived. If you make yourself believe a Gritty Story about yourself, you will all of the sudden become super powered. Further, your ability to communicate is dependent on your ability to tell ideas through story. Every date, interview, or piece of info you give to others fits into a grand narrative. How well you demonstrate your view of the narrative determines how well others understand your view point and work with you. So again, nail your story-telling in order to nail down your relationships. Now that I’ve talked about the importance of Story, I want to introduce you to Rick and Morty. Rick and Morty is a show that explores deep-level philosophical topics through science-fiction and dark comedy. I personally think that Rick and Morty is required watching for coming close to understanding some of the latest concepts discussed by @Leo Gura, especially for those who have yet to make the important leap of personal retreats and/or trying psychedelics. Nothing is a replacement for direct experience and direct experience requires a quantum leap, but at the very least some materials can make that leap smaller. Rick and Morty is what happens when you mix discussions of Absolute Infinity with South Park. And they basically nail everything on the head. Where Flatland demonstrated how the 4th dimension works, Rick and Morty shows you a glimpse of what Absolute Infinity looks like and just how crazy things get when you talk about such infinity. I have two issues with the show. The first one is that they don't state outright is that everything takes place in Consciousness/Buddha-Mind. The other issue is that the show can have a depressive bent: just because the universe is meaning-less does not mean it has less-meaning. Existentialism and nihilism represents a mind that has trouble grasping the beauty and glory of Absolute Infinity. The show's creator, Dan Harmon is a genius who’s clearly woke as fuck despite not being prototypically ‘enlightened’. In other words, he’s a cartoonist version of the types of Western Thinkers Leo discussed in Part 2 of the Understanding Absolute Infinity series. Just like some of the people Leo discussed, Harmon has come close to describing that which is not actually describable. "When you feel that mental breakdown happening, that means you're about to get smarter. You're growing. You're inheriting the universe. You're becoming closer and closer to a thing called "God," and "you're gonna get through this. You're gonna get trough this." It's like when you have a bad trip on mushrooms or acid, your friend who says, "This is cool. This is normal. Even though the walls are talking to you. You just need some orange slices. You need to get through this, and it's important that this is happening. It's giving you perspective." Otherwise you'd just be like, "This is insane, so I'm insane, so nothing matters, so I think I'll go do something horrible in public." - Dan Harmon Its pretty amazing that Rick and Morty is so popular despite it’s deep topics. It shows that the world is ready to make a shift to another tier of conceptual thinking. Harmon would have gotten ostracized and/or killed for most if not all of the ideas he presents on the Show, let alone having done so on a major network at any other point in history. But today he’s celebrated as one of the best cartoonists alive. None of this would have happened if Harmon did not have a near-religious zeal for the art of story telling. He lists Joseph Campbell as an early influence and demonstrates a immense understanding of the placement of plot twists. The fact that Rick and Morty has a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes further demonstrates his story telling abilities. So does the fact that his previous show Community is a cult classic. "When you realize that something is important, really important, to the point where it's more important than YOU, you gain full control over your destiny. In the first half of the circle, you were reacting to the forces of the universe, adapting, changing, seeking. Now you have BECOME the universe. You have become that which makes things happen. You have become a living God." - Dan Harmon For all of that, it’s unbelievable that he wrote an entire free course for storytelling and posted it onto a near-unheard-of wiki page. His course is simple, concise, and profound. Each sentence carries deep meaning that goes far beyond how to make cartoons. If you read between the lines, there is a ton of insight to be had. Again, I cannot emphasize this enough: read between the lines of what he’s discussing and apply it to your own insights. Start here to see a video of how Harmon structures his stories Then click here to begin Harmon’s story-telling course

Well, considering how @Leo Gura has mentioned that he's writing a book (which I'll be first in line for as soon as it comes out), I might as well get more of my own stuff out there so no one thinks I'm copying. Also, I can't emphasize how much writing helps. In particular, writing basically eliminates the monkey mind 'problem' by giving your mind a rubik's cube to solve -- how to describe whatever it is you want to describe. Anyway, here's another section: How to use this book - The Nature of Enlightenment “The most profound insights arise from questioning the overlooked obvious” – Peter Ralston 260 BC - Hiero’s new crown pleased him. To celebrate his long climb to the top of royalty, he’d appointed a goldsmith to make him the most beautiful wreath ever as a message to everyone else. After weeks of work, the goldsmith produced a masterpiece - a wreath truly worthy of the gods. Indeed, it seemed no mortal man could have produced such a wreath. The commoners began rumors that the king’s wreath was not made out of gold, but silver, which is much easier to work with. Heiro could not stand such scandal. He might as well have been a king without a crown. So, he held a public trial for the Goldsmith and the crown. If the crown was made out of gold, the Goldsmith would be awarded with even greater money than before and Heiro would look like a just, benevolent ruler. If not, the Goldsmith would be tortured in front of the city as a warning to anyone who tried to mess with royalty. The goldsmith’s talent ran in the family, as exemplified by his cousin Archimedes. Not only did Archimedes use calculus to prove the area of the circle 2,000 years before the actual invention of calculus, but he also invented hydrostatics and the compound pulley. For this reason, Archimedes was the first person the goldsmith went to for help. “I have two days before they kill me!” the goldsmith cried to Archimedes, “I don’t know how to prove to the king that the crown is made out of gold other than destroying it and showing him the insides. But I can’t destroy my life’s work – we all know the gods would punish me for doing so! Then again, I don’t want to die for my masterpiece, either!” Archimedes got to work immediately. Prior experience told him that gold and silver had different weights at the same overall size. If he could figure out the size of the crown, then he could compare it to the a known amount of pure gold of the same size to tell if it was real. But there was a problem: up to that point in history, no one could figure out how to measure the volume of an object with an irregular shape. I mean just look at the thing - do you sacrifice accuracy by using a big ruler, or do you waste time by using a tiny ruler, one which will still contain inaccuracies? Archimedes spent all day and night trying to come up with solution to this issue. Alas, nothing worked. Dejected, Archimedes went to take what he knew was to be his final bath before the king killed his cousin and then killed him for helping a traitor like his cousin. As he stepped into the bath, Archimedes noticed that the water level rose. As he got his whole body in, it approached the top of the bath itself. And when he placed his arm in the water, some of it splashed out the sides. At that moment, insight struck him: the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. "Eureka! Eureka! (I found it! I found it!)" Proclaimed Archimedes. Eager to share his discovery, Archimedes leapt out of his bathtub and ran through the streets of Syracuse naked telling everyone of his discovery. ---- Most people think of this Eureka moment as happening in an instant. This is only partially true. See, Insights transcend the term “slow” and “fast,” existing in an nigh-unknowable plane of hidden mystical awareness. Insights are partially “slow” because they usually need time to incubate. Like Archimedes, you need: · Previous experiences that give you lessons · Time spent concentrating and contemplating over a topic · And a little bit of mental relaxation for ideas to float in. But once you build the correct scaffolding, insights seem to come out of nowhere and they do so almost instantly. The key is to recognize that this is different from thinking. Thinking usually involves a step by step series of problem solving. That takes too long. Direct Insight - involves an actual recognition of something. When you open your mind to the new possibilities, there’s a sudden shift in perspective where that which didn’t seem to exist suddenly exists. Again, the truth is that nothing changes: you simply realize that which was always there in the first place. Archimedes didn’t invent the fact that you can measure density using water, he discovered a fact that was always there. The same is true for enlightenment. Except you probably don’t realize that yet. In particular, you think you can’t become enlightened or haven’t already had Enlightments. This is because of shit marketing tactics and the natural human tendency to not investigate things on ones own with open-mindedness. See, like Archimedes, you too will be partially tempted to run around naked telling everyone of the Absolute Truth. Its just too obvious and too amazing not to. On the other hand, the answer is so simple, you’re not going to want to say anything. After meditating for 42 days and realizing enlightenment, Siddartha said “I truly attained nothing from complete, unexcelled Enlightenment,” Immediately afterwards, Siddartha, now the Buddha, went off to the mountains to live alone. He figured there was just no way anyone would get it if he talked about what it is he ‘got’ because there was just nothing to say. After a while, however, people started begging him for help. They’d heard of his enlightenment and wanted a piece of it for themselves. He refused to budge. One day, someone pointed out that if he were to help, then eventually, someone would ‘get it.’ With the hope that just someone somewhere might get it, he began teaching. His first teaching consisted of sitting silently while he stared at the crowd. This continued for a few years, much to everyone’s frustration. His second teaching consisted of telling everyone that he was not a teacher, no one should quote him, and that nothing he was about to say was actually true. This continued for a few years, much to everyone’s frustration. His third teaching consisted of telling everyone to stop relying on teachers and to see the truth for themselves. This continued for a few years, much to everyone’s frustration. After a while, he gave up on that and started alluding to regular sensory experiences to try to point out what’s up with reality. Now everyone was happy. Unlike the density of an object, the Absolute Truth cannot be spoken. At best, the Absolute Truth can be pointed to with analogies and stories. When egos run upon these stories its up to them to see what’s being pointed to on their own. And the problem with that is that egos exist in almost direct opposition to the truth: you are immortal, infinite, and omnipotent; the ego convinces you that you are mortal, finite, and of limited potential. Moreover, the only way for you to ‘get that you’re immortal is that the ego has to go away long enough for you to see that yes, you really are immortal. To the ego, going away equates to death. That is, in all seriousness, to become immortal you have to die. You can see how this could create problems. Mainly, one faces the question of how to convince people to go on an inward journey even though they think they have a bunch of stuff going on outside themselves. The next question is how you are going to get them to kill what-they-think-of-as-themselves without having them literally take a knife and slit their wrists. Intro to Marketing 101: You tell them it’s more worth their time than anything else. You tell them enlightenment is this grandiose thing filled with extra universes and heavenly figures and eternal bliss. You tell them that its some near impossible journey only taken by heroes, legends, and gods and that they are brave for starting such a journey. You tell them that it costs no money and that by even beginning to ask about enlightenment, it’s their destiny to attain it. Oops, my bad. I got ahead of myself. That’s not marketing 101. That’s Intro to Marketing 100: fucking lie to them. Tell them something that’s true, but not really. Tell them just enough that they feel happy enough to spread the word, but just enough that everyone else can accept easily. Don’t tell them the whole truth because the whole fucking truth cannot actually be told. Turn the Truth into a meme. Make it something that follows the SUCCES model of making lessons stick: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Storied. Don’t make people think too hard – their own biology prevents them from doing so. Tell them that Jesus died on the cross for you to tell you that you are a child of God. The Buddha sat under a tree to figure out that when he became enlightened, everyone became enlightened because he is the same as everyone anyway. Krishna has your back as long as you focus on doing you and becoming the best person you can. Yes, it's true, but no, it's not at all what you think it actually is because the truth is far more nuanced yet simple at the same time. Think about it: for basically everything in life, we need previous experiences and understandings before we can accept new experiences and understandings, but for the Absolute Truth, we must find something that rests on absolutely no prior experience or understanding for it is that which is prior to all experiences and understandings. Most people can barely get past the first layer of questioning themselves when you ask them why they do the things they do. Forget the second layer. And Fuck the third layer, that one’s impossible. Enlightenment, on the other hand, literally requires coming up with the answer to an infinite regression of questions. Do you really think people are going to do sit down and do this for no reason? And yet what’s Absolutely Hilarious – the Kosmic Joke - is that everyone can do it. I mean it. I really mean it. I really really mean it. That’s what drives some enlightened people insane. They can’t help but do something to let everyone know what’s up. Put it this way: a few months ago, I went to watch my 5-year-old cousin play T-ball. In case you didn’t know (or otherwise didn’t have a childhood growing up cough), T-ball is a form of baseball where, instead of having people throw the ball at the batter, the ball would sit on a mount, absolutely motionless and easily available to knock out of the park. It’s supposed to be so easy, even a 5-year-old kid could do it. To my amusement, the kids would take a swing and totally miss. Sometimes, they’d line up to bat looking in the wrong direction, as if they were going to hit the ball into the fence behind them. It was the cutest thing ever. You too would think to yourself how is this possible? But you couldn’t run onto the field and play T-ball for them. They have to figure it out on their own. This is the feeling I get when it comes to discussions about nature of enlightenment. Its like Humanity has basically been stuck in a 10,000 year old Abbott and Costello Who’s on first skit that mixes the words you, nothing, truth, infinity, god, allah, the higgs boson field, the universe, simulation theory, consciousness, and " " (wordless expression). Everyone’s talking about the same thing, but every time someone kind of gets it, they proceed to get mad at everyone else for being 'wrong,' even though they’re basically just as wrong and just as right. Human nature is basically a process of spiraling from one description to the other, flipping off the other descriptions until you realize that they're all capital-I 'It' masking itself through words. ----- We’ve all had insights. And so, part of us gets why Archimedes ran around naked. We also know that when we have insights they kind of just strike us out of nowhere. In particular, we have to try really really hard and then, just let go and take a nice bath to clear your mind. Now I want you to imagine that you can have an insight into the biggest questions of life. If you’re not sure what questions those are, let me get you started: 1. What is consciousness? 2. Does God exist? 3. Is our universe real? Are we in a simulation? 4. Do we have free will? 5. What is the universe made of? 6. What is Truth? How do I know what is right or wrong? 7. Why is there something rather than nothing? 8. How do we stop ourselves and the universe around us from dying? (Foreshadow: How do you prevent the 2nd law of thermodynamics from taking us over?) 9. How did life begin? 10. Are we alone in the universe? Both us as individuals and humans as a species? 11. What makes us human? Why? 12. Why do we dream? 13. Can you really experience anything objectively? 14. Why is there stuff? 15. Are there other universes? 16. Why is math so accurate? What are numbers? 17. What is at the bottom of a black hole? 18. Is time travel possible? 19. What will be the fate of our species? Our universe? 20. Why is the universe so exquisitely balanced such that life can exist? 21. Is there life after death? 22. What is the meaning of life? 23. What is beauty? 24. What am I supposed to do with my life? This is the type of stuff that enlightenment refers to. I’m not exaggerating. You can answer all of these with the same insight: The Absolute Truth = Consciousness = You = Pure Awareness = Absolute Infinity = Pure Imagination = The Universe = God = Nothing = Everything = All = Zero/Zero = “ “ (there is no actual word for it) So without further ado, here’s what enlightenment is: Enlightenment is insight to the Absolute Truth. It is direct consciousness of what-is as-it-is for-itself as-itself. It is insight into that which is Absolutely True about the nature of reality, the nature of the self, and the nature of existence. Here are other clarifications: · It is NOT something that happens only once -- You can keep having insights that go deeper and deeper into the same subject: Absolute truth, the same way you can view a diamond form many angles. · It is NOT strictly Either-or -- Although yes, the insight itself is either-or, you may have different glimpses of insight at different moments such that you awaken more to the truth just like you get better at using the multiplication table once you understand it and begin to apply it in new ways. · It is NOT the same as personal transformation -- The truth specifically does not change and transformation is, by definition, change. What happens is that the truth allows you to have a significantly easier time changing your behavioral patterns. · It is NOT impossible -- If anything its pretty easy once you set up the proper mental and physical systems for attaining insight. You can definitely do it! And once you know what to generally look for, insights will start coming by the boat load. · It is NOT 'eternal bliss, no matter what' -- Sorry kid, you’re always going to have problems as long as you live the life of a human. Thats just what we do - make up problems for ourselves. In fact, trying to go for eternal bliss will probably just cause more suffering. As Rick Sanchez once said, "you want to *burp* rip that band-aid off now. You'll thank me later" · It is NOT Something you perceive, in particular it must involve some out-of-this-world emotional, sensational, or physical experience; nope, the world basically stays the same. -- Put it this way: intuitively grasping the Pythagorean theorem makes math more beautiful, but its not like your paper flew out of the room and turn into an angel. (Sidenote: I admit however, that if you saw your paper fly out of the room and turn into an angel, it would probably make enlightenment easier.) · It is NOT unavailable to you now -- Enlightenment is always and only available NOW. Stop waiting for it to happen in the future. Enlightenment is available at any point, and at any time the way insight is always available to Archimedes. Open your mind up to possibilities and allow for impossibilities. It will be almost like an "aha!" moment, but it won't actually require thinking other than focused contemplation mixed with some looseness from psychedelics or simple relaxation. What we're looking for requires recognition, which seems like thinking, but it's an entirely different mode of perception. Its like when you cross your eyes to look at one of those 3D puzzles and boom it just pops out: reality is neither matter nor hallucination - it just kind of is and it is all and you are its source and you are all and you are everyone and everyone is all which means that it is no one person except that it is all one person. Trust me, that last sentence will make sense as soon as you 'get it.' Maybe this section of this book will make you ‘get it’. Maybe another section will. Maybe it will take a re-reading. Maybe, you’ll get it while taking a bath 60 years down the line. Be ready. Be aware. Be open. Enlightenment will mean the end of your journey. You’ll be done. You’ll just know. Pure and simple. You’ll understand why it is that some of the things that have been marketed to you the way that they’ve been marketed to you. That is, you’ll begin to see that them as partially true, and in some cases, totally possible accounts of reality. You’ll to see them as partially wrong, and in some cases, totally impossible accounts of reality. Heaven Exists, but it’s not what you think of. The Gates of Heaven Exist too, but the Gate is a Gateless Gate. The implications of the existence of absolute truth as nothing but pure indistinct imagination are so crazy, yet elegant, so chaotic, yet simple it will blow your fucking mind. Enlightenment will also mean the beginning of your journey. You’ll find yourself on your knees, trying to pick up pieces of your mind back up off the floor from having been blown to bits. This will take the rest of your lifetime. And If you’re at all curious like me, your first enlightenment will just make you want to have more enlightenments. Everyone knows that One answer begets five more questions. This is just as true for The One Answer. Enlightenment will also mean that that there is no beginning – there is no end. Life itself becomes this never-ending series of insights to be had about the same thing - you. Everywhere you look at becomes a series of clues, all pointing to final puzzle piece that restarts the whole puzzle - Everything. Except that the puzzle is infinitely big and infinitely small and infinitely long and infinitely wide and so it doesn’t even have a final piece - Nothing. As you might imagine, this makes every day inexplicably exciting and full of wonder of some greater force – God. ----- Archimedes didn’t stop working on mathematics after helping his cousin. He began wondering about the nature of circles, for he intuited that circles held a view of the Absolute Truth. While he worked on this problem over the next few years, the Roman Empire toppled the Greek Empire. Archimedes barely noticed as his house got stripped away and the Romans forced him to live on the streets. It didn’t matter if he was Greek or Roman – that stuff was all relative. It only mattered that he find the Absolute Truth. One day, a high-ranking Roman soldier came up to Archimedes as he sat on the road drawing circles. The soldier commanded him to make way for the passing Roman guard. But Archimedes, in the middle of solving a problem involving circles, refused to budge. The soldier grew enraged – for what reason does this poor old Greek commoner disobey his commands? “Nothing,” Archimedes replied, “Don’t disturb my circles.” The soldier promptly ran through Archimedes with his sword. Archimedes had good reason to not move. ---- The Main Point: Enlightenment = insight to the nature of nature itself. No more, no less. Focus, relax, boom.

This website has amazing demonstrations of how infinite you are. The scale presented stops at the plank length for the small stuff and the Cosmic background radiation for the big stuff, but guess what? You - consciousness - the universe - God - nothingness - absolute infinity goes unimaginably farther in every way imaginable. The scale demonstrated here is nothing compared to the Truth of what you actually Are. Everywhere you look, everything you see, everywhere you move consists of an infinitely deep, multidimensional fractal of pure consciousness. You can go to the end of the universe, the end of time, and zoom into the the planck length of a Planck length of a Planck length and you will only find more consciousness. Consciousness is All. And You are the primary source! And everyone else - even an amoeba - is the primary source too! We are all the primary source such that nothing is the primary source. In the words of the Three Musketeers: "One for all, all for one!" This is not woo-woo pseudoscience. This is physical fact; metaphysical fact; psychosocial fact! This is fact. Period. We are Knots of consciousness folded up within 'Big' consciousness to seem like we are seperate. Do not be fooled by your own tricks. In the words of DJ Khaled, "never play yourself"! The superclusters you see toward the far end of the scale of the universe are basically gigantic neurons that help form the Kosmic Mind that we reside in. But this mind is just one mind in a sea of more minds that goes so far that it wraps upon itself to once again become you. We play around in the mind of God. God plays around in the mind of us. Kosmos plays around inside Kosmos. And what do we play? We play the game of "how did I do it?" God loves telling himself the story of how he created himself. See, Consciousness is irreducible... it is the ultimate metaphysical conundrum... it is unsolveable... except for a god. God sets up some conditions using the language of mathematics, blows itself up and then figures out how to put itself back together. It's like painting on cardboard, taking a knife to cut up puzzle pieces, scrambling the puzzle, and then punching yourself in the face to forget what the puzzle is supposed to look like. It takes an infinite being to solve an infinite problem. If it's not us, it's some other lifeform, but somehow, someway we will (re)learn how it's done. The life form that figures it out will always be Us at its core. In this way, god reforms god. Here's another way to put it: ever since the Big Bang, our universe has slowly died due to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The universe uses us - life forms - to prepare itself for its heat death due to cosmic expansion. We are how the universe thinks. We are the ones who help it understand how to rebuild and start a new bubble of inflation once the heat death occurs. Big Bang - life - heat death - Big Bang - life - heat death. And it all happens Now. Forever. Forever Now. Do you see? So who started it? Us. Who ends it? Us. Now and forever. Note the my usage of Kosmos instead of Cosmos. 'Cosmos' refers to the physical reality we observe normally. 'Kosmos' refers to the multidimensional evolving Totality of existence, encompassing not only the physical (cosmos/cosmic) but the biological, emotional, mental, psychic, and spiritual domains. On the left are neurons. On the right are cosmic superclusters. Put it together: one mind, one consciousness. All the best, TJ

@Vladimir this is the quality work I like to see. Great stuff!

Did I finish the program? Yes. Around this time last year, actually. How was my life changed? By applying the principles from the course, the books, and the weekly videos, I'm far better off than other people my age. Its insane how much help there is packed into the course. Remember to do ALL of the homework! Note: Temper your expectations! Its not like the course "counts" as anything toward your life purpose ... you have to do the work yourself! It takes time for you to figure out what you're going to do... The stuff I wrote down a year ago isn't the same now. Do not expect to have your entire plan nailed down by the time you finish the course. The information has to seep in. Buy the booklist... Read all of the 5/5 books. This will help you make sure your life purpose sits well with consciousness work. The version of Leo that made the Life Purpose course is veryyyyy different from the version of Leo that gives advice now. As such, make sure to add in the latest ideas into your own Life Purpose exercises.

Do you really want to get into a verbal volleyball match about what is and isn't a manipulation? Yes, everything we do is a fucking manipulation. Life itself is a series of manipulations. As long as you stay alive, you manipulate. When I wipe my ass, I manipulate. Now that we have that out of the way we can talk about what we're going to manipulate and whether its worth it to. That is, how conscious are we of our manipulations during the finite run-through of life by an infinite awareness? Consciousness is about transcending (read: rise above, go beyond, stop serving, become independent of) the ego, not getting rid of it. You will never get rid of the ego as long as you are alive. Buzz off if you're going to try to create a straw man where it seems like we're saying no one can manipulate anything. Your idea of 'the way people are' is just your limited view of reality. A limited view that seems to not quite understand how to view the benefits and the setbacks from Elon's plan + lifestyle. At several points throughout your response you mention 'how reality is' without acknowledging that this is your limited fucking view. To put it plainly, no, it is not how reality is. It is fucking relative. To quote Kanye West, "you don't have the answers, Sway!" This is not the description of a systemic thinker. It is the description of a pessimist. He sees the same view that man has held since the dawn of time. It's not new. It's not cute. It's not noble. It's just the ego extending itself to a longer view of time. Especially in order to sell more of its own product at its own convenience. No one is saying this. Again, don't create a straw man. It's possible to see the good and the bad at the same time. I told you from the beginning that not only did I support much of the project, I personally offered my time to it. For all intents and purposes, I'm probably the person most focused on helping his project considering the literal hundreds of hours I've put into it - but even I can see the pitfalls. The world moves forward, not backward. I am not saying that we go back to ancient times. I am not saying that everyone must live in caves. I am not saying that we must totally give up on all technology. What I'm saying is that we become more mindful of the root cause of the technological issues: the ego itself. Elon's ego clouds his view of the problem. Yes, part of your purpose is thinking about its actual effect. Elon's purpose is effected by his personal happiness. I will address the logic fully in the box below. Here is the logic laid out as a syllogism: All unenlightened, mentally unhealthy, overly success driven humans create technologies that tends to create more problems than they solves, especially as a result of unawareness Elon Musk is an unenlightened, mentally unhealthy, overly success driven human Therefore Elon Musk creates technologies that tends to create more problems than it solves, especially as a result of his unawareness Whats worse though is the Absurdity of his project considering his mental unhealthiness: Elon specifically aims to mitigate the destructive technologies created by unenlightened, mentally unhealthy, overly success driven humans Yet elon creates destructive technologies by remaining unenlightened, mentally unhealthy, and overly success driven ???????? Profit He is a fucking microcosm of the problem, see? Elon remains stuck in an unenlightened, techno-focused, success driven, mental unhealthy state the US remains stuck in an unenlightened, techno-focused, success driven, mentally unhealthy state. Here's another way to put it: You won't solve problems from the same level of thinking that created them. This is a technological issue Elon thinks about solving the problem from a technological level therefore, Elon won't solve the problem But not only won't he fail, he will fail after ruining his marriages, his children's lives, his happiness, and influencing others to do the same. Do you see the fucking issue with this? Yes you want to include the outcome of your life purpose into the overall calculation for your lifestyle. Lets go further, because this is where your delusion becomes hilarious. Google Neuralink. Read what the companies plans are. Or don't do it because I'll tell you. His plan is to develop neural implants that help humans control computers and A.I. after getting a subdural injection. That is, in all seriousness is for people to go get brain surgery just for the chance to not use their mouse while talking to computers. Basically, he wants to turn us into cyborgs. He says it is the only chance we have against A.I. developments. That's all well and good. In fact, I love the plan. I too want to create cyborgs. But here's what you're not considering: All of musk's plans revolve around getting people to buy in on paradigm shifting ideas. I mean we're talking about the world's best guy at convincing people to try shit. His cult of personality is unmatched. Marvel's Ironman - the best selling superhero - is literally based off of him. Do you really think that its "reality" that he cannot whatsoever use some of the same money, expertise, research, design, and systemic thinking that he uses to convince people to become cyborgs to have them meditate for like an hour or two a day and consider going to a therapist for depression? Really? What a joke! Let me be very very very clear here: I am a fan of his projects. I genuinely think they help humanity. If Neuralink called me and hired me, I would probably cry of joy. I am not a fan of when his projects get to a point where he works 100 hour weeks, has 3 divorces, and has depression. There comes a point where more is not better. He has reached this point. If he's a good leader, he would set up a system such that the companies don't die if he takes a break to rethink things. He can take a break, rethink things, and hell, even have a personal enlightenment. IF he did and IF he encouraged the public to look deeper within, THEN he would have his cake and eat it too. But as it stands, he is geared to not have his cake, not eat it. I am readily aware of this fact. It will take 7.6 billion years. This is only pertinent in the sense that the sun's dying is the source of Isaac Asimov's The last Question , the story that influenced the creation of Space X. Other than that, no it's not really pertinent because we're discussing the overall theme of Personal Development. No one is blaming Musk. He serves as a microcosm/prototype/example for the larger issue of our society's stuckness in orange level thinking.

@Edvard You're not understanding what @Leo Gura is pointing at. I'm a Musk fan myself. Hell, I even applied to work at one of his companies. But even I admit there are major structural issues with the issues Musk targets. Start at the basics. So far, Elon's main companies target 5 core issues. In no particular order, here are these issues and their respective companies: the increased use of the internet ---> Paypal the need for sustainable energy ---> Tesla, SolarCity, HyperLoop space exploration as a safety net for issues with sustainability ---> Space X artificial intelligence taking over ---> NeuraLink, OpenSource A.I. and rewriting human genetics ---> [no company yet, but expect it within 20 years seeing as the first CRISPR baby came out last week] These are really big issues. But the key is that these are artificially created issues. Not artificial as in "made up" but artificial as in "man-made." As the last two hundred years have shown, every technology you created just creates another problem. It's like the technological hydra. Musk's current plan is to fight fire with fire. The problem is that fighting fire with fire only creates more fire. Musk is indeed a system's thinker or else he would never have gotten this far on his career path. But he's currently focused on the systems revolving around technology not psychology! That is, he's not thinking deeply enough into the system built around the system of technology. The things on musk's list are generated by one thing: the ego. In particular, our need for more stuff; our need for longevity; our need for ease; our need for immortality Lets look at Musk's list of 5 problems once again, but look at solutions that target the root cause: the increased use of the internet ---- > fucking stop relying on the internet so much the need for sustainable energy ----- > live more sustainably by accepting that you don't need so much stuff space exploration as a safety net for issues with sustainability ---- > don't make the planet so dirty you have to leave in the first place! artificial intelligence taking over ----- > why the hell do we need to develop an A.I. so badly? war? health? porn? no one who's enlightened needs this shit to get by. On top of that, even if we inevitably move toward creating such A.I., at least we can become more aware of its affects and how to mitigate those effects by slowing down and thinking. and rewriting human genetics ----- > again, we could benefit from slowing down a little bit and being aware of our actions. We could knock out basically all of the problems on the list by waking the fuck up. With regard to Musk specifically, Leo's essentially saying that if a guy like Musk publicly went through a process of waking up, he would help target the root cause that has generated the systemic issue of world suffering and unsustainable technologies by providing himself as the ultimate role model. Imagine if Musk, in targeting his admitted depression, said that perhaps everyone must refocus on what's important in life besides success. Imagine if in targeting the cause for his depression, he had a deep realization and then, whenever he's asked for the best advice for 20 year olds (as he almost always is), he said that the #1 thing to do was to go get enlightened! Imagine if Musk spent his 11 Billion on researching the efficacy of 5-MEO-DMT for enlightenment? Except this all sounds ridiculously wishful thinking by this point. There's no chance he'd ever pull the above moves -- He's too far deep with his incredibly big plans. His lifestyle is the definition of having too much on your plate. Yet, he's the inspiration for kids growing up. So, those kids think that the only actions worth taking are big world changing actions -- types of actions that end up creating big world changing problems later down the line. Its self-sustaining unsustainable behavior, see? Again, I am a big fan of Musk -- his face hung on a poster that motivated me as I put in 550 hours of study for the MCAT just to get into medschool just to then work at one of his companies. But I had to pull back and recognize that there is something that lies underneath suffering: The ego. My ego. Our Egos. Until Musk recognizes this, he's only adding more bullshit to the giant pile of bullshit we call 'progress'. What the world needs is to learn how to not need. Now.

Yes, a way to live can definitely follow from enlightenment(s). That is essentially the whole book i'm writing is about. (except not -- it's actually a book about nothing) It is true that the solution is to follow your intuition. The hard part is in separating intuition from egoic confusion, however. Here's an excerpt from the section called Neo-Advaitan Confusion and another section on Core Values. ----- “If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.” – Abraham Maslow Some people think that connecting to Pure Being means literally doing nothing – especially nothing to help themselves. Maybe they listened to Eckhert Tolle’s Power of Now. Or maybe they want to “go with the flow,” because they saw it on a Bruce Lee poster and think that trying to do anything is a problem. Do not confuse the fact that you already are the truth with meaning that there’s nothing to do and nowhere to go. That is bullshit. I have never, ever met or heard of anyone who does absolutely nothing 100% of the time (that’s not dead or a vegetable.) Enlightened masters still do stuff: · Jesus sacrificed himself for his own reasons · Peter Ralston writes, teaches, and Kicks people in the face for his own reasons · Siddhartha Guatama talked to people about their problems for his own reasons it's not like they said "oh I'm enlightened now, fuck it there's nothing to do." Indeed, they're enlightenment specifically helped them take action. (Although one must be careful to separate enlightenment from transformation!) What we conventionally think of as us is actually a pattern of behaviors and stories exhibited by a seemingly constrained the universe itself. The ‘real’ us doesn’t even exist in the spacetime continuum. What’s important about that fact is that no one behavioral pattern is you because all behavioral patterns exist within spacetime. So, there’s no reason to identify with any one behavioral patterns. If you smoke, then no, it’s not Absolutely True that “you are smoker”– so, you don’t have to judge yourself so harshly for smoking and you don’t have to accept it as capital-T True that you will always “be” a smoker “no matter what.” Moreover, if you can correctly identify your unhelpful patterns, you can begin to change them to more helpful ones. Wakeful people have set strong behavioral systems in their life to help them follow their core values. As a result, they access pure being with less and less effort until it approaches becomes zero mental effort. So yes – there’s nothing we “have to” do, in a sense the only thing you have to “be” is yourself. But no – there’s plenty of work left; the life you’ve been living up to now is nowhere close to what your actual self is about. And even more no - there are internal pulls toward higher values that still pull one toward living up to their greatest potential. Unless you wake up every morning and have absolutely no struggle whatsoever to live your deepest values in-and-of-themselves every single moment of every single day to such an extent that you literally don’t care if you die at any moment because life is that good, then no, you’re not there yet. It’s easy for people to run around claiming that they’re enlightened just because they “understand” that there is no self. Its not like we can hop into their mind to see if they're lying. But look at what they do. Look at what they concern themselves about behaviorally. Look at what they stand for. Look at how they handle conflict. In particular, ask if that their actions connect to their deepest, most transcendent values 24/7 365. If not, then sucks-to-suck: they're probably not nearly as ‘enlightened’ as you might think. Enlightenment does not equal transformation, but it most certainly will help. ---- The Main Point: Balance theory with practice. Someone who truly ‘gets it’ will access pure being as much as possible. Their actions will reflect that fact, as they constantly live their core values for they'll realize that there's not much else to do anyway. ---- What are the cores value? The core values serve as internal "stars" for navigation. Or to put it another way, if you look deeply enough, the core values will feel like magnets that pull you in the appropriate direction. In truth, the core values do not "exist" in the "real" world. They are inexplicable and irreducible, only understandable from pure intuition. But who cares if they're "real"? Life is a game and the fun is in trying. You will never embody any core value perfectly, but the pursuit of our core values automatically helps us transcend life's distractions and remove our conditions-for-happiness. Thus, the main byproduct of our core values is Pure Being and Pure Happiness. It’s unnecessary to reinvent the wheel when it comes to figuring out what’s valuable. You are human and the core values are common to all humans, so you can perfectly well look at other humans to figure out your own core values. The following list comes from my own personal insights as well as research from Abraham Maslow, who called them Being Values. If you don’t believe me, good! I don’t want you to believe anything I say – I want you to investigate each idea for yourself. It’s through the investigation that you will help yourself aim at each value with laser focus. A person in Pure Being cognition will a life in accordance to the following core values: 1. 100% responsibility ---- “When we become responsible for our own values, we no longer have to struggle to make the world conform to our needs, rather we can adapt our own values to fit the circumstances that confront us in the world.” – William James “There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.” ― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning --- Taking 100% responsibility for everything that happens to you in life is the cornerstone of all personal development. It’s the well-spring for self-sufficiency and self-efficacy. No matter what happens, you always have a choice in how to respond. You have a response – ability. Specifically, taking responsibility means choosing to forego distractions in favor of solutions and figuring out how to transcend your conditions for happiness. Other words: autonomy; independence; not-needing-other-than-itself-in-order-to-be-itself; self-determining; environment-transcendence; separateness; living by its own laws 2. Truth, Wisdom, Curiosity, and Exploration ---- “The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.” – Albert Einstein, ---- We all have an inner pull to find out what’s true: a willingness to see what lies in the unknown, an openness to insight and the discipline to put insight to use. Indeed, the pursuit of truth is by far the most powerful journey a human can take. To go on this journey, take it as a given that you’re at least partially wrong about life and work to make yourself less wrong. Keep exploring until you finish. Then, when you think you’re finished, take it as a sign that you have gone the wrong way, for you’re never finished. Other words: honesty; reality; nakedness; simplicity; richness; oughtness; beauty; pure, clean and unadulterated; completeness; essentiality 3. Aliveness, Richness, Beauty --- “Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.”-- Ralph Waldo Emerson --- We are each pulled toward having complete experiences of the world. We want to not feel “used to” the “mundane” objects of reality. We want to look into our lover’s eyes for the ten-thousandth-time the way we did for the first time. We want to find, observe, and appreciate beauty. We want to look in awe at what’s possible for the world of color, smell, and taste. And we have a pull to feel fully functional – connected to both our animal intellect and human intellect. I think this is the magic behind movies – they suck you into the experience completely so that there is no thought – only observance. I also think this is the reason some people do things like Cocaine – they want to feel the buzz of total pure sensory experience. The final note is that part of pursuing aliveness, richness, and beauty is the motivation to go out to nature. Wakeful people love going to nature. Other words: process; non-deadness; spontaneity; self-regulation; full-functioning; differentiation, complexity; intricacy; rightness; form; aliveness; simplicity; richness; wholeness; perfection; completion; uniqueness; 4. Simplicity, Space, Orderliness, Elegance ---- “In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.” -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow --- Life is simple, but we insist in making it complicated. Simplicity in this case refers to taking out the unnecessary junk from out lives – our schedules, our rooms, and our psyches. Space refers to space in our schedule to remain flexible. It also means having time to breathe and relax. Keeping things orderly, without becoming neurotic about it, contributes to a person’s mental health and well-being. A clean room is a clean mind. And in mathematics, a theorem exhibits elegance if it is surprisingly simple yet effective and constructive; similarly, a computer program or algorithm is elegant if it uses a small amount of code to great effect. Similarly, some of the greatest personal wisdom has elegance to it. Finding elegance in your understanding is a sign of growth. Embodying elegance in our lives is the ultimate form of mastery. Other words: honesty; nakedness; essentiality; abstract, essential, skeletal structure; minimalism 5. Authenticity – Vulnerability - Worthiness --- “The closer you stay to emotional authenticity and people, character authenticity, the less you can go wrong. That's how I feel now, no matter what you're doing.” - David O. Russell --- Authenticity is all about being real. Genuine, not an imitation. It means cultivating the courage to be imperfect, to set boundaries, and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable; It means exercising the compassion that comes from knowing that we are all made of strength and struggle; And it means nurturing the connection and sense of belonging that can only happen when we believe that we are enough. Emotional richness comes from authenticity and vulnerability, for we have to allow ourselves to open up to whatever may come. Other words: realness; openness; genuineness; emotional availability; 6. Benevolence, Justice, and Empathy --- “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson --- We want our work and our lives to raise the lives of our brethren. We all want to know we help. We don’t even care if others know, we just want to know that we do. Justice is about keeping the world in karmic balance. It goes beyond tit for tat. It also goes beyond doing unto others what you’d like to have done to you. Justice is ultimately about creating a better world through fairness. Empathy has four key elements o To be able to see the world as others see it. o To be nonjudgmental o To understand another person’s feelings o To communicate your understanding of that person’s feelings Remember: the natural, happy state of the human is a giving one. Other words: fairness; orderliness; lawfulness; "oughtness; rightness; desirability; oughtness; honesty; goodness 7. Wholeness – Direct Connection - Integration – Relative Perspective --- “You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.” – Alan Watts --- The truth is that we are not separate from the universe, we are the universe. Our greatest suffering comes from forgetting this fact. Wholeness refers to making a direct connection to universal oneness. We want to feel connected to our fellow man, our fellow woman, our pets, the trees, and the stars themselves. Achieving this connection simply feels better than anything else. It is the purest form of pure being. This is why we value sex so much. For most people, sex is the closest they will ever come to the ultimate connection. Integration means alignment of mind, body, and spirit. It also means taking imbalanced parts of our psyche and re-balancing them. Black and white thinking, or dichotomy thinking, lies at the root of many struggles. The universe is filled with paradoxes, and we want to become comfortable with those paradoxes. 8. Mastery -> excellence, effortlessness, and challenge ---- “A man cannot understand the art he is studying if he only looks for the end result without taking the time to delve deeply into the reasoning of the study.” ― Miyamoto Musashi --- We want to put forward work that we can genuinely feel proud of. We want to make music with just the right rhythm. We want our paintings to have just the right amount of color. And we want to enjoy the process of creating that work. We don’t want to strain to take the steps in the right direction. We want our work to flow out of us like nothing. Then again, we also want challenge. We don’t want to feel bored. We want to constantly grow our skills and grow our abilities. If we set a world record, fine – what’s more important is to set a personal record. Finally, we want to finish. We want to actually complete things instead of leaving them hanging. No one likes to quit if they know they can finish. To quote Robert Greene, “Think of it this way: There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you.” “The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done.” Other words: ease; lack of strain, striving or difficulty; grace; perfect, beautiful functioning; necessity; just-right-ness; just-so-ness; inevitability; suitability; justice; completeness; "oughtness" 9. Dispassion, Equanimity, and Nonneediness --- “What humans require in our ascent is purpose and realism. Purpose, you could say, is like passion with boundaries. Realism is detachment and perspective.” – Ryan Holiday --- We want mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in difficult situations. We pursue coolness in our society as a false way of approaching this peace. We want the ability to let the pain flow through our bodies and purpose flow through our actions. We want to not need anything. We actually want to give up the plucky level of passion shown by amateurs and take up the stoic dispassion of professionals. We don’t want our hearts dragged this way and that by the random external forces. To quote Ryan Holiday, “passion typically masks a weakness. Its breathlessness and impetuousness and franticness are poor substitutes for discipline, for mastery, for strength and purpose and perseverance. You need to be able to spot this in others and in yourself, because while the origins of passion may be earnest and good, its effects are comical and then monstrous.” Put simply, we want emotional discipline. Other words: composure, calm, level-headedness, self-possession, coolheadedness, presence of mind; serenity, tranquility, phlegm, imperturbability, equilibrium; poise, assurance, self-confidence, aplomb, sangfroid, nerve 10. Telos -> purpose, progress, completion --- “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” ― Viktor E. Frankl --- We want transcendent meaning without having to delude ourselves. We want the ups and downs of our days to add up to something bigger. We want to have a story that counts. We want to have some action, some drama, some romance, and some comedy in our lives. We want to have goals to aim for, a path to walk, and feedback for that path. Ultimately, we want a vocation – a calling, summons, or strong inclination to a particular state or course of action with an almost religious zeal. We don’t want to just work for work’s sake: we want work to become part of us in the best of ways. Other words: necessity; just-right-ness; just-so-ness; inevitability; suitability; justice; completeness; "oughtness"; ending; finality; justice; "it's finished"; fulfillment; finis and telos; destiny; fate; feedback; meaning 11. Playfulness-Creativity-Uniqueness ---- “The opposite of play is not work — it’s depression.” - Brian Sutton-Smith ---- Play is something done for its own sake. It’s voluntary, it’s pleasurable, it offers a sense of engagement, it takes you out of time, and the act itself is more important than the outcome. The fact is that none of us must take life so seriously. I don’t care if you’re the president of a major country, an open-heart surgeon, or a kindergartener: Play is part of the healthy human experience. Period. Play doesn’t just give us mental rest, it also grows our level of genius and self-efficacy. This is why many mammals play – it the most fertile ground for practice and mastery. It is through play that the lion cub becomes an elite hunter. Similarly, it is through play that the apprentice becomes an elite master. One form of play is creativity. Specifically, creativity means playing with in the unknown as you bring skills or ideas together in a novel manner. We all have a pull toward creativity, but shame may cover up that influence. Do not let this happen to you – it would mean giving up your godly power. Let it be known that you are god essentially because you have (better yet are) the power of imagination. There is nothing else in the known universe that has the ability to pull things from imagination other than the universe itself. The universe needs you to create and express your unique perspective. Other words: fun; joy; amusement; gaiety; humor; exuberance; effortlessness; idiosyncrasy; individuality; non-comparability; novelty 12. Unconditional Happiness --- “Unconditional happiness is the highest technique.” – Michael Singer --- It’s simple: if you value your true self, then you must value unconditional happiness. Why? Our true nature is unconditional happiness. The unconditional happiness that is our true nature is always there, no matter whether good or bad things are happening - it's the essence of what and who we are. We are universal observers and we love everything we observe! This happiness has no reason for it. It simply is. Everything else is just dress up or an excuse to allow ourselves to feel what’s already been there. Denying the possibility of unconditional happiness is a sign of delusion; a sign of denial of reality; a sign that you're playing yourself. As such, let it be known that we are all deluded at times. And that is why we must keep reminding ourselves of unconditional happiness as a virtue. Other words: self-transcendence; nirvana; heaven; pure being; pure joy 13. Death ---- “Death never takes a wise man by surprise; he is always ready to go.” – Jean de la Fontaine ---- This is about as counterintuitive as humanly possible – I mean, our entire intuition is to go move away from death, is it not? Don’t think that valuing death means literally putting your life at risk 24/7 a lå the flying Wallandas or Travis Pastrana. Although, if that’s how you want to live, more power to you. Instead, valuing death more is about recognizing that the option to not-live is always near and that death gives life some much needed urgency. It’s about being thankful for the chance to be alive and the chance to take everything in through the wonderful window of perception that is you. It’s also about coming to terms with your legacy and not living with regret. Ultimately, valuing death means becoming friends with the all-consuming Nothingness that permeates the universe. Are you unsure of what core values you value the most? Death will help you get that straightened out real quick – just think about what you’d like to do if today was your last day, this year was your last year, or the next five years are the last chance you’d have with your parents. Here are the main points to consider about death: Death is inevitable Everyone has to die; your lifespan is decreasing continuously; the amount of time you have for spiritual practice is small The uncertainty of the time of death human life-expectancy is uncertain; there are many causes of death; the human body is very fragile The fact that only spiritual practice can help you at the time of death your loved ones cannot help; your possessions and enjoyments cannot help; your own body cannot help Other words: making peace, pre-mortem, life-as-a-preparation, becoming friends with nothingness, knowing that this too shall pass --- The Main Point: Live a life of Responsibility, Truth, Freshness, Simplicity, Benevolance, Vulnerability, Wholeness, Master, Telos, Equanimity, Playfulness, Unconditional Happiness, and the embrace of death – watch your happiness skyrocket, for free. ---- One last point about the core values: do not confuse them with morals. They are simply what a person in the healthiest mental state will naturally pursue. They're what happens when you give a person time, room, space, energy, and time to do whatever they'd like however they'd like for as long as they'd like. Again, they're called core values because you feel them at your core and they're nice to live up to in-and-of-themselves.

I've been practicing how to write over the past few months. This is a small sample. WISH: to go after what’s worth our time; to not hesitate; to not get lost on our journey; to use our time effectively; to experience things to their fullest OUTCOME: die knowing that we stopped to smell the roses; die knowing that we didn’t waste time hesitating; die knowing that we used our energy effectively OBSTACLES: supernormal stimuli, the paradox of choice, multitasking PLAN: take things in moderation, make as many constraints as possible, develop deep work principles ------- 2012 – Bronnie Ware leans on a wall and sighs. “Stay strong, Bronnie - you can do this.” Bronnie just found out that one of her favorite patients died. Now she has to meet the next patient with a smile as if nothing happened. Bronnie wipes away a tear, lifts her head up, and walks through to door to find Bob, a 65 year old gentleman with no family present. “Hi, Bob, I’m here to help you.” Bob’s just happy to have someone to talk to. All of Bronnie’s patients die. Bob will be no different. It just is as it is. She’s a palliative care nurse – her job is to comfort patients and talk them through the grieving process. Often, they talk about the good times. But just as often, they talk about the bad times – in particular, their greatest regrets. After years of conversations with her patients, Bronnie noticed that when it comes to regrets, “common themes surfaced again and again.” She’d began documenting her patient’s greatest regrets, analyzing them with statistics, and publishing the results on a blog. Eventually, She turned her findings into the best-selling book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. These are the things people regret most about life, in order: 0. ‘I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.’ 1. ‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard’ 2. ‘I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings’ 3. ‘I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends’ 4. ‘I wish that I had let myself be happier’ We already talked about the number one regret during the section on leaving the comfort zone. We’ll also talk about that last regret in the next chapter. For now, let’s focus on regrets 2, 3, and 4: working too hard; not expressing your feelings; and not staying in touch with friends. These are all symptoms of one thing: Distraction. In particular, we constantly choose to distract ourselves with things we think bring us happiness during our current run-through of Life In-and-of-Itself, even though they don’t. Worse, we don’t realize it until it’s too late. There are simply too many forms of distraction to list them all here (it would be a distraction from our journey). So, we will only talk about the ones pertinent to the top regrets of dying. I’ll make sure to keep things light while we do. Supernormal Stimuli: Kosmic Beetles, or why you work so hard for so little 1983 - springtime in the deserts of Western Australia. Entomologists Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz wander the dirt roads looking for insects to observe. On their way, one of them kick over a “stubbie,” a golden brown beer bottle common to Australian culture. It isn’t anything out of the ordinary to find a stubbie out here – many people throw them out as they drive across what’s essentially the middle of nowhere. Rentz picked up the bottle to help clean up the environment. To his surprise, he found a male Australian Jewel beetle hanging off the bottle’s side. The biologists were excited to add the such a rare find to their collection. The beetle surprised them as they tried sliding it off the stubbie and into their container: wouldn’t budge. The tried picking the bug off with their fingers, shaking the bottle, and spraying water on it – nothing worked. This was one persistent little dude. What makes a beetle so adamant about clinging to a stubbie? Zooming in closer, the biologists saw the beetle’s penis extended outwards and poking the edge of the glass over and over. This was one confused - albeit persistent - little dude. They laughed and kept walking, this time making sure to examine any more stubbies they found. Lo and behold, they found three more stubbies and two more male beetles. That made for three confused – albeit persistent – little dudes. The researchers decided to run an experiment. They took the four stubbies they’d found so far and laid them out in the open next to each other for a period of 30 minutes. Would other beetles come to use their ‘stubbies’ on the stubbies? They did. Six beetles - all male - ran over to cling to the stubbies. Specifically, they made their way to same part of the bottle: a part studded with bumps on the brown, hard, glass edge. One of them clung hard even as ants crawled up the side of the bottle and bit its penis off. That last beetle makes for a confused – albeit persistent – little dude who gives no fucks whatsoever (as he gives fucks). To figure out what was going on, the researchers then sought out the female beetles. This proved itself as the hardest task during the research project. The females, you see, like to hang out in the shade, away from the Australian desert sun – so, when they do come out the males see it as an almost once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Most importantly, the female jewel beetles are larger than the males, colored the same way as the brown stubbie-glass, and have bumps on their back that look almost exactly like the ones found on the side of the bottle. Except, the stubbies felt better. And that’s the real key here. The male jewel beetles are nearly blind when it comes to sex: they can see the overall shape and color of their mate, but they rely on the feel of the female’s back bumps to know where they have to go to get it in. So, when they feel someone or, in this case, something that has bigger back bumps than usual, they take it as meaning that they have stumbled upon super attractive mate – the equivalent of thinking you matched on Tinder with the girl next door, only to find out your fucking Kim Kardashian instead. Jackpot! For their work, Gwynne and Rentz won the Nobel Prize. Their work demonstrated the phenomena known as supernormal stimuli. According Wikipedia, this is when “there’s an exaggerated version of a stimulus to which there is an existing response tendency, or any stimulus that elicits a response more strongly than the stimulus for which it evolved.” In normal people speak, it’s when something promises more than it actually delivers. Supernormal stimuli exist everywhere in nature. Examples include: · Sea turtles confusing Hotel signs with moonlight and travelling the wrong way · Small birds taking care of fake eggs the size of footballs while ignoring their real, golf-ball sized eggs because they only want to put their energy into the ‘healthiest’ offspring · Moths diving into candle flames because the infrared light given off resembles that of female moth pheromones Supernormal stimuli also exist everywhere in modern society. Examples include: · Processed food – replacing non-preservative, non-sugary, ‘normal’ foods. · The TSA – replacing actual security measures through a series of theatrics · Video Games - replacing real-life adventures and growth · TV shows – replacing friends, education, and proper relationship networks · Porn – replacing sexual companionship · Drugs – replacing positive feelings or meditative contemplation · Instagram, Facebook, and Forum likes – replacing real-world achievement · Pets that look extra cute – especially cats – replacing human companionship and slowly taking over as feline overlords · The Kardashians – especially Kim - replacing human companionship and and slowly taking over as reptilian overlords (I’m excited to see the clash between the last two as they try to battle for the position of overlord. My money is on the cats, frankly. My cats kill lizards all the time, so I think they’ll have no problem against the lizard people known as the Kardashians.) Anyway, those are just some of the more obvious supernormal stimuli that exist. A primer, if you will, for the real shit. See, my main point isn’t gross addictions – that stuff is easy. We all get that that stuff is ‘bad.’ No, my point is about the subtler things: the supernormal stimuli that are so supernormal we can’t even realize that they have replaced everything that’s normal. (Note: you really have to read this in Matthew Mcconaughey’s voice): We’re all just Kosmic Beetles trying to fuck the Stubbie of Spiritual, Career, Relationship, and Cultural Success, thinking that we’ve hit the jackpot. The biggest distractions come from the things that go far beyond specifics and go into the realm being ethereal or conceptual. I’m talking about toxic values. I’m talking about valuing things like: · Money In-and-of-Itself · Fame In-and-of-Itself · Being Loved In-and-of-Itself · Sex In-and-of-Itself · Being Right In-and-of-Itself · Morality In-and-of-Itself · Ideology In-and-of-Itself · Success In-and-of-Itself · Competition In-and-of-Itself · Power In-and-of-Itself · Attention In-and-of-Itself · Judging Others In-and-of-Itself · Arguing In-and-of-Itself · Security In-and-of-Itself · Excitement In-and-of-Itself · Love In-and-of-Itself · Society In-and-of-Itself · Achievement In-and-of-Itself · Being Perfect In-and-of-Itself · Self Esteem In-and-of-Itself · Acting Cool In-and-of-Itself · Spirituality In-and-of-Itself · Mystical Experience In-and-of-Itself · Feeling Accepted In-and-of-Itself · Following Rules In-and-of-Itself · Tradition In-and-of-Itself · Opinion In-and-of-Itself · Fitting in In-and-of-Itself · Enlightenment In-and-of-Itself (we’ll talk about this later, but yep, you the promise of Absolute Truth can easily serve as a distraction) · Core Values (if they’re taken to the extreme, making one disregard other Core Values) · And basically anything you’ve learned from your culture, including this book In-and-of-Itself. All of those things start out as things worth pursuing, but they ultimately ruin you by making you work too hard and stop focusing on your Core Values, ultimately preventing you from accessing Pure Simple Being. There’s no amount of these things that you could get where boom you suddenly feel fulfilled. Toxic Values leave you feeling undervalued, overworked, unfulfilled, and make you want to quit the game of Life Itself Core Values leave you feeling invaluable, reinvigorated, fulfilled, and make you want to play the game of Life Itself more than ever. That is the difference. And I get it: the toxic values seem “normal.” That’s because these are the types of values that get thrown around by the media, your friends, and society almost everywhere you look. Specifically, these values are upheld because culture upholds them to serve itself. Let me say that again: Toxic values are there to help culture serve itself, not you. Culture does not give a fuck about you because culture can’t give a fuck about you, only itself. That’s the whole point of culture – it’s a series of ideas that propagate themselves regardless of the individual. Its like a cold, lifeless conceptual virus. Here’s how Culture Viruses work in a nut-shell 1. Take something that relates to the Core Values-In-Action 2. Create super stimuli. Take one aspect of that thing and focus on it so that it stands out and catches eyeballs. Make it so that people get things done easier, faster, or better than before. Promise way more than whatever actually happens in real Life Itself. Make sure to hide the defects. Always promise Pure Being as a result. 3. Market the super stimuli. People will naturally come like desperate beetles trying to get a nut. Do this so that you create, grow, or protect that culture. In particular, make it so that people either bring in more folks to grow the culture or have those within the culture fight those who oppose the culture’s existence. 4. Repeat I’m not just talking about any one culture in particular – I’m talking about all culture: · Wall-street culture · Hippie culture · Black Culture · Zen Culture · Redneck culture · Buddhist culture · Christian Culture · Goth Culture · Star Wars Culture · Comic Book Culture · Bodybuilding Culture · Nerd Culture · Book-writing Culture · Academic Culture · College Culture · Los Angeles Culture · Alaskan Culture · Asian Culture · Bald Men’s Culture · Bald Women’s Culture · Deaf Culture · Trans Culture · Cis-Gendered Culture · Every. Single. Culture. Culture mindlessly throws out Super Stimuli for you to start giving useless fucks about the same way Drunkards driving down the desert throw out stubbies. Almost the entirety of your motivations in life are about as ridiculous as a beetle fucking a stubbie while getting bitten by ants. And then on your death bed, you sit there next to Bronnie Ware, wondering where it all went while your family and friends are gone – you worked yourself dry as you suffered thousands of ant bites, positive that you hit the jackpot, only to never bust that all-forsaken holy nut because you didn’t even bother to look at where you were sticking your dick. This is why distraction is an obstacle. So how do we plan for that? Wait till the next chapter.

I've been practicing how to write for the past few months so that I can properly explain my ideas. This is a small sample. 1977 - a 28 year old Arnold Schwarzenegger sits in front of his interviewer, body sprawled on the chair, legs wide open. It’s only a few days until his final Mr. Olympia contest, where he’ll face off against the bodybuilding champions from the world to see who’s the best of the best. The interviewer asks Arnold why he loves lifting so much. Arnold clears his throat. (Note: You really have to read this in Arnold’s voice) “The greatest feeling you can get in a gym, or the most satisfying feeling you can get in a gym, is the pump.” The Interviewer leans in to understand. The pump? “Let's say you trained your biceps: blood is rushing into your muscle, and that would be called a pump. Your muscles get this really tight feeling, like your skin is going to explode any minute. It’s like you blew air into your muscles and it feels different, it feels fantastic.” If you’ve ever attempted to run, swim, or lift weights at maximum effort, you’ve felt the pump. It’s what comes immediately after feeling “the burn.” For most people, this feeling is a “bad thing” that tells you that you were barely able to complete your exercise – a sign of weakness. For Arnold, this just isn’t the case at all. “It's as satisfying to me as cumming is, as having sex with a woman and cumming.” He continues, “so can you believe how much I am in heaven? I'm getting the feeling of cumming in a gym, I'm getting the feeling of cumming at home, I am, like, getting the feeling, feeling of cumming backstage.” The interviewer, understandably, is in taken aback. What the hell is wrong with this guy? “When I pump up, when I pose out in front of 5,000 people, I get the same feeling. So I am cumming day and night! It's terrific, right? I am in heaven.” If there was any one key idea for personal development it would be this: Do the emotionally difficult things. Adventure only happens when you step outside the safety of your nest. Growth only happens when you push your body, heart, and mind to its limit. New inventions only come from the edge knowledge. You know it already: you want to go out there. Conflict comes from the fact that saving energy is the key to life. We are animals living in a universe where energetic decay is the law. For billions of years, the animals that could to take shortcuts did so, ultimately beating out their competitors in the evolutionary arms race. The name of the game is survival of the laziest not strongest. As such, evolutionary editing has pushed us to not leave our comfort zone, even if part of us wants to. In a time when humans have their basic needs met, the comfort zone is harder to leave than ever. Why the fuck do anything when you have food, water, shelter, a partner to snuggle up to while watching Reality TV, a Facebook account to boost your self esteem with custom-tailored likes, and Videogames to scratch the itch for self-actualization through arbitrary ‘achievement points’ that subjectively feel no different from an Olympic medal or a job promotion? Moreover, we work long, boring jobs that drain our mental energy for little to no pay off. In particular, economic globalization makes it such that more stuff gets produced for the same amount of pay – and yet we can’t complain because there’s always some one available to take our jobs. In fact, if we do complain, we’re seen as entitled pussies or unappreciative dicks. Dude, there’s people out in like, Wakanda – you know, where the Black Panther is from - going through shit and you’re complaining that you want more? What’s wrong with you? We come home tired after a long day, only to find bogus, disconfirmed, unsupported pop-psychology articles that claim will power is a muscle that drains itself after even the smallest of disciplined decisions. We’re told that even something as small as choosing to eat carrots sticks instead of cupcakes will ruin the entirety of our decision making for the rest of the day. We’re then told that the only way to prevent this is to build up our willpower muscle. And since we’ve worked once or twice out in the past and we know how painful the pump was, we then conclude that training our willpower must be just as painful as well. We’re also scared of the unknown. Evolution nurtured the animals that found their niche, but it only did so by ruthlessly killing off the ones who found the wrong niche. And you don’t know which niche you’re in until its too late, really. As such, we’re scared of failure; We’re scared of embarrassment – an internal sign tribe will leave us for dead; and in general, we’re scared of the potential of death. And the Kosmic joke about enlightenment is that we’re specifically going on an adventure toward our own death! Who’s crazy enough to do that? For what? Nothing! Are you kidding me? No! What a joke! But lets say we do leave the comfort zone. Then we have to consider our tendency to overreact to our fear of the unknown and rush things. We listen to Tony Robbins tapes on repeat, puff up our chests, take advantage of adrenaline, and shoot ourselves into the unknown, thinking there’s no other option. We quit our job without lining up other offers. We break-up with our lovers instead of trying couples counseling. We sign up for a 2-year gym membership in full and end up going for 2-weeks. We tell everyone about the new ‘startup’ we created, only to have that startup fold within 6 months. The worst part is that when friends and family tell us that what we’re doing is not exactly the best idea, we tell them to fuck off because we think we’re the real heroes – they’re just side kicks; we’re the ones who stepped out of the comfort zone, they have yet to wake the fuck up and see the adventure waiting for them out there. Even if we do manage to bob along in the deep dark ocean for a little bit, we get tired after a while and start to sink. It took us years to climb up the career ladder, so we justify buying an audacious sports car, only to crash it months later. Or maybe we spent 5 years trying to lose weight, so on the day that we hit our target weight we begin to binge eat. Fun fact: 80% of The Biggest Loser contestants go back to weighing the same they did at the beginning of the show, regardless of how many hundreds of pounds they managed to shed. Lets call this the Upper Limit Problem – we self-sabotage or otherwise handicap our success to return to a state of comfy equilibrium. The point is that we get ourselves way over our head, one way or another. Then We kick. We scream. We begin to drown. Our best hope that point is to have friends and family – the same ones you told to fuck off earlier – magically appear to transport us to the little comfort cubby that we spent so much energy leaving. We sulk in our cubbies, bruised, heart-broken, and ashamed. We develop learned helplessness – we start to think that trying at all is a joke. And we’re embarrassed to ever go after anything again because we figure our friends aren’t going to save us a second (3rd? 13th? 50th?) time – Death is real at that point. We’re left so traumatized that we now think there’s no choice but to plug back into the matrix. As once said in The Big Lebowski, “Fuck it dude, let’s go bowling.” Fuck it dude, let’s stay with this safe job that pays nothing. Fuck it dude, I don’t care if he treats me like shit, at least he pays me attention. Fuck it dude, let’s get wasted this weekend - “it’s the times you won’t remember with the friends you won’t forget”, right? In our daze, we turn on the TV to see fuckers like Arnold Schwarzenegger gyrating in a speedo on stage. There are fuckers in this world who seem to love leaving their comfort zone and do so with absolutely no problem. They’re almost inhuman. They love reminding us of that fact. And even if they don’t actually like reminding us of this fact, then in the weirdest twist of mental irony, the more they talk about their regular human problems, the more inhuman they become. (See: Emma Watson, Jennifer Lawrence, Bill Murray, and Siddartha Gautama for examples of cults of personality based on people who specifically try not to create cults of personality by admitting they’re human). We watch in awe of these ‘demigods’ while we heal our bruised, broken, ashamed egos from earlier. Let's be honest, that’s really what the 'matrix' is – a place to watch those fuckers be themselves – total fuckers - and fuck us while we heal ourselves within the comfort zone. Schwarzeneggar, Ferriss, Robbins, Trump, Jobs - The name changes but the process doesn’t. They all sit there on stage showing off their latest product – themselves, ultimately - and gloating while they cum in our face. Fuck that, dude. Specifically, Fuck saying ‘Fuck it.’ Stop getting so much cum in your eyes from those fuckers on stage – it’s clouding your vision. Life doesn’t have to be so black and white. We can leave our comfort zone without drowning. The whole conflict with our energy - most of it is an illusion. The truth is that as we start doing stuff, we’ll naturally compensate by getting stronger and using a smaller proportion of our energy. That’s the whole point of growth. Our plan is the following: we focus on growing ourselves about 4% total every day ideally. Potentially, we’re talking about 1% growth intellectually + 1% growth physically + 1% growth spiritually + 1% growth in career or relationships. Or, it doesn’t even have to be all at the same time: perhaps its better to shift the ratio so that you grow certain aspects more than others. In that case, we want to coast on certain aspects of life and focus on 4% daily growth on the subject of spirit or mind or career or relationships. The point is we don’t do too much, but we definitely don’t do too little. Overtime, we develop compound growth such that after adding a few percentage points everyday for 365 days, we've become completely different people. Huge growth, no stretch-marks. The hardest part isn’t starting, it’s maintaining right after the start and through the middle. This is the case for basically anything worthwhile in life. Here is the entirety of life’s quests: you start with a lot of emotional momentum, then you hit a huge wall of boredom and plateau, but then you break past that wall and it gets easier… until you once again plateau, at which point you must repeat the process. Arnold Schwarzeneggar knows this and plans accordingly. After a while, he gets to that point where maintenance is easy – the pump feels good – then he leaves to start another project or continue growth. This is how he became a millionaire before becoming a movie star. So then the question becomes, how do we plan to break through that wall? Well, Cliffhangers give stories momentum, so we’ll answer that later. We want to first talk about the other two problems we have to WOOP – distractions and conditions-for-happiness.

@Sharpadox What you're looking for is Grit. Walt Disney, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Salvador Dalî, Leonardo Da Vinci, and @Leo Gura all have Grit in common - hence, they're all successful in their Life Purpose. What is Grit? From Wikipedia: Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual's passion for a particular long-term goal or end state, coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective. This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lie within a gritty individual's path to accomplishment, and serves as a driving force in achievement realization. Commonly associated concepts within the field of psychology include "perseverance", "hardiness", "resilience", "ambition", "need for achievement" and "conscientiousness". These constructs can be conceptualized as individual differences related to the accomplishment of work rather than talent or ability. To put it simply, Grit is: Perseverance and Passion for a long-term Personal Value. How do you Develop Grit? 4 steps. (1) identify a burning interest; (2) practice it a lot; (3) develop a sense of higher purpose, by which Duckworth means I must believe that my passion will improve the world. (4) do it To sum it up, here's the number one determinant of Grit: Your story for your life. In particular, having a story that you are destined to do a certain activity or bring about some creation, no matter what happens. What is the most powerful version of such a story? The story that God has created you to recreate God either through art, business, discussion, or some other endeavor. The other thing that Walt Disney, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Salvador Dalî, Leonardo Da Vinci and Leo all have in common is that they're each trying to bring about their perspective of what God means to them. The word changes due to their personal context growing up, but it's the same shit: - "Pure Imagination" (Disney) - "Universal Recursive Super-Simulation" (Musk) - "The Self" (West, although the dude's a Zen Devil) - "The Completed view of the conscious + subconscious" (Dalî) - "The spirit that moves life" (Da Vinci) - "Absolute Infinity" (Gura) The connection to pure intuition allows a human to move mountains. Just look up the biographies of any of those people listed: It's unbelievable what a person can do when they genuinely listen to deep intuition. What in particular helps them to listen to deep intuition? They have all developed a strong connection to that which is greater than regular life through intentional practice. - Disney did it through his time spent researching other artists and developing his story telling - Musk did it through learning the ins and outs of topics from tech, sci-fi, and physics. (Side note: Musk did this after getting through a deep depression in college wherein he then decided subserve his ego to a greater purpose involving bringing to life the vision of Isaac Asimov - yet another artist who described God, this time using science fiction. ((Side note within a side note: Leo and I disagree on this - He thinks Musk is better off quitting his plans to become a sage; I think Musk simply has a different view of absolute infinity and acts as a great help to humanity so he might as well keep on keeping on. ((Side note within a side note within another side note: I'm sure if we asked Ken Wilber - aka "Leo before there was Leo" - aka yet another person who's life purpose involves spent describing God according to his own vision - He'd say that the truth is somewhere in the middle.))) - Dali did it by cataloguing his dreams with the fervor of a mad man - West did it by pursuing his musical visions (He literally sees music as colors, by the way) - Da Vinci did it by constantly studying the nature of the world around him - Gura did it by spending over a hundred of thousand of dollars going to seminars and courses. So what does that mean for you? If you're struggling so much, perhaps focus on getting a view of the Absolute. Enlightenment is only the beginning. Once you see "it", all else will become bullshit and you'll have the necessary laser focus to dominate life as you spend your time trying to describe or recreate "it" for others to become inspired enough to see "it" for themselves. Once you get the joke, you too will want to become a comedian. And good luck trying to get everyone to understand the joke - that's what will take your entire lifetime for you to ultimately fail trying. At least, you'll have more Grit.

What I didn't expect was that I would cry so often when I see beautiful things as a result of consciousness work. I'd say I tear up in joy almost once or twice a week while doing 'normal' things. Just this morning, I teared because I saw a hummingbird drink nectar next to me. Usually tearing up occurs in the following process I see some interesting thing "out there" I look deeper into it, I see a possible connection that it might have to some deep insight, Then I look even deeper at the art, using the lens that the art might be a metaphor I tear up because the metaphor is so beautiful and it was always there and I didn't realize it until right then. In truth, everything is beautiful. But here are some of the 'weirder' things I've teared up about because they struck me as beautiful: Highlights of Tom Brady winning the Super Bowl and the story of how he got there (No, I'm not a Patriots fan) Paintings at the Dallas Art Museum (tip: start seeing all art as a metaphor for Absolute Infinity) Insights from books about Enlightenment A Green June Beetle that landed next to me (fun fact: there are 400,000 species of beetle!) @Leo Guras Videos this month and how well they describe aspects of infinity that I did not know how to describe Sex with my girlfriend (she'd teared up too.) HackSaw Ridge (basically crying during that entire movie) Some of the ideas for my own book The fact that I'm alive at all - actually, I've silently cried like 4 or 5 times over this fact. As a former football player who grew up in a macho culture, this has been shocking to say the least. If you begin crying of joy more often, that's a good sign. If you want, share on this thread some of the weirder things you've cried of joy over. All the best, TJ

Public Health is a wonderful career choice. You can literally save thousands of people. You can also enter a high consciousness project that exists outside of corporate america or academia. Public health is the reason we have longer life spans, not physicians/medicine/hospitals per se. The only reason you don't hear about it more often is because public health projects, when done right, function unnoticeably. If I were you, I would focus on starting up some cool math-related public health projects that help everyone (while adding to your credentials). Then I would getting into the best educational program possible. Taking care of those two things will take at least a year, so don't worry about the rest. Don't talk just do: I'll bet you can get into some PH math project at school within the next month if you make a personal promise to send 1 email a day.

I found a hilarious quote for my book: "When someone comes up and says something like, ‘I am a god,’ everybody says ‘Who does he think he is?’ I just told you who I thought I was. A god. I just told you. That’s who I think I am." One channel made an interesting video discussing West's philosophy: Other great quotes: "I'm Socrates but my skin is more Chocolate-y" "You ain't got the answers Sway!" "'I will die for the art! For what I believe in. And the art ain’t always gonna be polite! Ya’ll might be thinking right now, ’Did he smoke something before he came out here?’ The answer is yes, I rolled up a little something. I knocked the edge off!" ------ All jokes aside, when Leo talks about Zen Devil - think Kanye West. There's a difference between self-expression and childishness. Then again, before you criticize Kanye, recognize that your ego is just as present as his - you just happen to be a little less confident about self-expression. What's worse?

@Markus Tvtropes.org is the ultimate resource for breaking down media into its component parts. From their you can look for insights. Be warned: many tropes are representatives of taken-for-granted-ideas that are either completely wrong or otherwise limited in accuracy. Its easy to create a universe that fits your argument.

@Shin I was going to critique your entire endeavor because I see gaping holes in the logic of it's execution. But fuck it - experience will be a far better teacher. I genuinely hope you have fun and learn a lot, whatever happens. I'm interested to hear of your insights after the month of "retreat" is over.

@Shin have you done a retreat before? Also, you're still going to work?

If you're talking about the grand version of the collective consciousness - yes, many times, and I cry every time. But I also feel the more filtered version of it during every day life. By this point, I intuitively recognize that there's no difference between "my" perspective and "my" insights and the collective consciousness/unconsciousness other than the fact that my ego likes to take credit for "my" perspective and "my" insights as if "I" came up with them. We're talking about the difference between one Pando Tree and the entirety of the 6,000,000 kg organism named Pando - some dirt covers up the truth that lies at the roots but the truth is always there. I have personally seen the root system enough times that I now know what signs to look for in the dirt. As such, I feel the collective consciousness and residues of the collective unconsciousness every day. So counting the number of times I've felt it is useless. A logarithmic growth chart of how much I feel it would be more appropriate than a countable bar graph. Does this make any sense? Not my knees. I usually sit down or lay on my back and start screaming "OH I GET IT NOW! OH MY FUCKING GOD I GET IT NOW! THATS FUCKING HILARIOUS! HOW DID I NOT SEE IT! WHAT A JOKE! ITS SO OBVIOUS!" for minutes to hours at a time.

@WaterfallMachine To start, @eputkonen and @Natasha's responses are pretty spot on. I'm just adding further elaboration. Your ego is the localization of consciousness in space and time, with all of its limited understanding, memories, and accounts for existence. It is the story you that you think of as your life. And it is what you think of as you. For now lets call it the thinking mind. In truth, you cannot 100% control the thinking mind or Ego. The Universe needs your ego to have the ups and downs that make for an exciting game of Life. Examine yourself the next time you watch a movie. What's going on there? Do you feel emotions for the character? Do you also sit there just watching silently too? That's basically what's going on with your life. The way you love it when John McClane gets shot in Die Hard, even though you feel sad for him as a character; the way you love it when Luke Skywalker has to face his father, even though you feel angry for his personal injustice; the way you love it when The Bride finally Kills Bill, even though you also feel her exhaustion - That is the way the real you that is pure awareness loves every aspect of your life - both the highs and the lows, even if, for your ego, it sucks to go through that stuff at the time. But lets go even further – how excited would you be if instead of just watching the movie, you could really be a part of it? Imagine if you could actually be John McClane, knowing that you’ll be fine either way? The real you just wants to experience it all. It got sick of having a nonspecific view of absolute infinity and wanted to spend some time living through a specific door of perception. It loves you no matter what for allowing it to look through a specific door of perception inside of itself. This is what is meant by total love. It’s almost childish giddiness that exists for simply getting to exist! So this whole thing about getting depressed - that's your ego twisting upon itself. It is most certainly not the observing, true, no-self of pure awareness. Indeed, look deeper, and you will see that the real you is sitting there taking it all in joyfully. Here are some exercises you can do that will help you separate your two minds and take more control of your behavior despite your thoughts and emotions. 1. Whenever you feel a strong emotion or thought, disidentify with it and then take possession of it. “My boss is not an idiot. But I am having the thought that my boss is an idiot.” “I don’t hate my ex-girlfriend. I am feeling hatred toward my ex-girlfriend.” “I am not lonely and depressed. I am feeling loneliness and depression.” Language is very powerful. Notice when you disidentify from these emotions and thoughts in this way it 1) implies that they’re temporary states, and not permanent conditions and 2) forces you to take responsibility for them. They’re nobody’s fault, they just are. 2. Thank your Thinking Mind for negative thoughts and emotions. This is a technique from ACT and it is effective. It may sound absolutely nuts, but it’s effective because it FORCES you to accept your negative emotions instead of fight them. “Thank you, Thinking Mind, for feeling nervous before my date tonight. It will keep me on my toes!” “Thank you, Thinking Mind, for being angry at my boss. I really appreciate how much you care.” This is going to feel really bizarre – expressing gratitude towards negative emotions. But I think you’ll find that it diminishes the power of the thoughts and emotions over time and actually impels you to take action despite them. 3. Finally, if you find yourself in the heat of the moment, or if there’s something that’s really nagging at you, make the thought look and sound absolutely ridiculous in your mind. Take your time and play with it. Try to make yourself laugh. Take something that’s bothered you recently and hold it in your mind. Maybe it’s your girlfriend nagging you. Maybe it’s being terrified of talking to that cute girl in class next to you. Maybe it’s quitting your job. Distill it into a single sentence, such as, “I feel afraid of quitting my job.” Or “I feel irritated with my girlfriend.” Now close your eyes and imagine Bugs Bunny saying it, while chewing a carrot. Then Mickey Mouse saying it, while dancing and doing cartwheels. Pretend the Chipmunks are singing it to you in the form of a Christmas carol. Now, turn it into an image, maybe your angry girlfriend, or your broke ass sitting on the curb. Put that image on a television screen. Make the colors funny, give yourself a polka dotted suit. Make your girlfriend’s hair into a bunch of candy canes. After you’ve done this for a minute or two, stop. How do you feel? Chances are you feel much better about it and the negative emotion isn’t nearly as potent as it was before.

@Truth No, you're just not used to understanding what actual contemplation looks like and feels like. Contemplation is not easy and it specifically starts from a place of Not Knowing before moving backwards to even greater Not Knowing before you finally reach a place of Insight. For further reference, please read the Book of Not Knowing, watch some of Leo's about confusion, and look up Beau Lotto's video on Big Think about where creativity comes from. More importantly, contemplate over the meaning of the word contemplate and then come back when you've grasped what I'm saying for yourself. Unless you're talking about the time in-between contemplation, where you find that you have the sudden urge to find out more and more stuff. In that case it's just called "the rabbit hole" or "the urge to mentally masturbate further"

contemplation.