kieranperez

I'm not the only one noticing this then I guess. Even when I tried to "pull myself out of the bucket" I'm still not taking action though, namely because (at least from own estimation) I don't know what the fuck I want anymore. I don't know what I want to do, I don't really know (concretely) what my life purpose is, where I want my life to go, etc. There's no specific intention to drive actions, planning, strategy, etc.

@clouffy in case you live in the USA, here are some options for Green: San Francisco (Bay Area) - which is where I live. Granted, making 6 figures here pretty much makes you middle class. It is the SF Bay Area though. It's not the whole flower movement thing like it was in the past. It's definitely a combo of Green, Orange, and Yellow. Depending on what you're interested in and if you can afford to live here, this could really serve your development. Southern California - San Diego, LA, etc. Oregon: Particularly Portland but really the West end of Oregon. East is pretty conservative Blue. Other cities in Oregon that are Green are cities like Bend, Medford, and Ashland (big psychedelic scene where people like Martin Ball live) Boulder, Colorado Austin, Texas Seattle, Washington Hawaii New York City Other than that, take Leo's advice in terms of your own individual development.

I had a thought recently, I was remembering one of my earliest memories that I can really conjure and I was probably about 2 or 3 years old and then I had the thought "what is really the difference between then and now in terms of my understanding? Do I really know SO MUCH more than I did then?" In a matter of seconds I really felt down to home that I really am not that much smarter or more intelligent than that of a 2 or 3 year old in terms of my understanding of existence, who I am, or anything really. If anything, I was better at learning back when I was 2 years old if I'm being honest. I'll that I am as a ego which is what I've operated under the assumption as is just accumulation and collection of answers, rationalizations, beliefs, assumptions, conditioned patterns programming, and projections. I challenge you to look back as far back as you can and really wonder... do you really understand more in terms of your everyday understanding of existence and what's true when you were like 2 or 3 years old? Or is what you have a juicy familiar web that all interconnects into something very cohesive which brings a sense of "ah! This all adds up and makes sense!" How much more do you really understand of existence and life and what anything is in your moment to moment conscious awareness than you did when your sense of self was first forming?

I'll start with the altered states part as this is becoming the more freaky element of my daily life. The attachment below is a good visual example of what I'm experiencing at some point everyday. I'll be sitting down and suddenly I look at the floor and suddenly the floor becomes this infinite thing. It just zooms in for infinity and I'm sitting there like "what the flying fuck is happening to me?" I'll sometimes look in the mirror and the same thing starts to happen sometimes. Or if I drop into this concentrative thing staring at the wall or something in the distance. I haven't even taken psychedelics before. I haven't even been meditating lately for a few weeks cause I haven't had a place to meditate. I'm not really frightened by this nor am I getting excited like "is this a sign that I'm going to get enlightened soon?!" Or some such silly idea or fantasy. I would love to get advice and someone whose maybe dealt with this. Now the intuition I've been getting and the deep call I'm really feeling... First I want to make this very clear that this isn't some fantasy I'm having of me daydreaming of some idealistic escapism from my own development and all that. I'm not begging to live in the woods "so I can be one with nature." I'm simply reporting this intuition and this call I'm feeling and what I literally feel as this call to adventure. Don't get hung up by the language I'm using like "call to adventure" and what not. I'm describing an intuition that is nonverbal. This is something I can literally feel as both a presence, pull, and something I can literally feel in my body (particularly where the 4th chakra is). So I've really been contemplating my death more and more each passing day and this past week I've finally had the time a little bit each day to really connect back on old running/hiking trails I used to really be in touch with and finally had the break from my toxic moralistic household with my dad (and instead had to spend time with my mom who is now a hoarding and is pretty much clinically psychotic at this point). I really took Christmas yesterday to be on the trails and finally for the first time in awhile really got to muse and feel what I really want. I've been feeling this deep inner thing (I really don't know what to call it other than "a call") to really go beyond this society and pursue enlightenment. Now... What does that really mean? I mean, that can mean a lot of different things. That can mean going into a monastery, shaving my head and go full Zen or maybe do something else. I've said this in the past but it's really a call to be nothing. I don't feel like rejecting society but I just feel this pull to withdraw from the world and commit myself to a deep inner life in solitude. The hard part about this is that I know this is an authentic call but also I don't know what this means tangibly. I really feel this deep connection and call to going within finally being alone and at peace in nature but also a yearning to really brave the elements. It's hard to describe this because 1. I imagine this sounds like I just want to reject life and the world, 2. It's hard to describe an intuition, 3. I don't mean being some unabomber. The I just feel this call to really turn inwards and go to the end of what all of this is and connect and discover "everything" and honor this call to go inwards because it literally feels like this pull and this intuitive "noise" that isn't going away in my head of this abstract thing I feel like I need to do and what I know what I really want which is to become a mystic/sage. I don't know I feel like I'm kind of rambling but I could really use feedback on this and how I can really approach this. Please don't be like "just follow your heart" because that doesn't help with anything.

No. That made absolutely no sense at all.

No one is saying you have to master anything. You're just going to be more evolved and have a more developed foundation of development. So if you want that by all means do it but you don't have to. Integration is important if you wish to move up in your development. I do want to throw out there, and as far as my 2 cents goes, don't try and confine your life to having to fit some model. You're not living to serve a model. This model is 1 tool in your tool belt. Spiral Dynamics isn't supposed to be used as some way of crafting some fantastical perfect person (which I see a lot of people treating it and thus suffering needlessly over it).

Honestly, I have a lot of emotional resistance to this. I feel cheap and like I’m cheating myself and am scared as resitant because I have a life purpose but I also need to get my livelihood needs met. Right now I’m honestly really scared and really backed into a corner. I have no relationship with my parents now and now living in SF (where it can cost $1500 for a room) with a cheap part-time job, no longer having a car now, no friends (to room with), and no assistance from any family to even try and help me move out of state where it’d be cheaper. Honesty I’m really terrified to the point where I get flight or fight responses and hyperventilating and feeling like the walls and even my mind are closing in on me. I really need help psychologically in terms of my emotions, projections, etc. in order but there’s no way in hell I can afford that. I have a life purpose which is to become a mystic sage and start something like Sat Yoga in Costa Rica and renounce and master enlightenment fully but I have a long way to go just emotionally and in my mental health and in satisfaction of my basic needs before I can do that. I really could use advice. The fact that I don’t have any support system or friends is making it really hard mentally or emotionally. I believe that if I start this thing I’m not going to have time to meditate, read, learn, etc. I also feel like this is impossible for some 23 year old as messed up as me. I know that I can as an abstract belief that I can start a successful small business but not in my experience be like “oh yeah, I can actually do this,” if that’s makes sense. The gap between my dreams and where I’m at in my circumstances, my mental stability and state of mind and the amount of challenge I can handle emotionally and cognitively, my own personal development just feels like an abstract fantasy or “it’d be possible if I didn’t have all this bullshit in the way.” I just don’t know what to do and I feel so closed in.

Don’t get hung up on the reference to science. I’m referring to the principle of how correlation doesn’t equal causation. Spiral Dynamics is a model that’s a result of science (there’s different types and levels of sciences). But again, keep in mind that I’m referring to the principle. You can be fully enlightened and embody it in your life and even be at levels such a purple because embodiment and mastery can really be dependent upon the culture and perspective you’re surrounded by, grew up in, etc. This is why Ken Wilber for example keeps hammering the point that Waking Up (enlightenment/spiritual work), Growing Up (his more all encompassing Spiral Dynamics), and Cleaning Up (psychological work, shadow work, therapy, ego work, etc.) need to be treated as 3 separate endeavors. Sometimes evolution and progress in 1 of those 3 pillars pours into 1 or 2 of the other pillars but for the most part they are separate. The one thing I will say I find interesting is that enlightened people pretty much always seem to fall into all of the ethnocentric stages on the spiral. I have a few good guesses and thoughts as to why this is but I don’t want to say I know.

Marcus Aurelius is a very healthy embodiment of Blue. Even if you read Meditations you can see how he takes deep nondual understanding of God, nonduality, and Consciousness into a healthy blue perspective (which is all that Spiral Dynamics is mapping). This is not a knock on Marcus Aurelius at all. He is a very good example of strong healthy Blue in a time that was pretty much Red. You can have deep full nondual understanding and still be lower on the spiral. Remember, Orange, Green, Yellow hadn't even emerged yet. These are very new developments in perspective, world view, motives, and values (which is all Spiral Dynamics is tracking). Stoicism itself is a very healthy Blue (kinda Orange) philosophy which really values things such as: Honor Self-restraint Dignity That sense of being the upstanding valiant one Moral & emotional composure Submission of one's self-interest to one's state (country, land, territory, government, etc.) So on and so forth. Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations is a great piece to go back and work on remnants of positive Blue that people might not have fully worked through. I definitely wouldn't put Marcus Aurelius or even maybe people like The Buddha at Turquoise. Nondual understanding of all of reality doesn't really make you Turquoise. Turquoise is world-centric and people take for granted that there were still things such as slavery involved in that time. People completely take that for granted just to put these people on a pedestal. That's not to take away from The Buddha or any sages of that era and to say he was evil or bad. No. That was their time. That was the world view, perspective, etc. and full blown enlightenment doesn't really change that (more often than not). There was no Turquoise at that time because the world wasn't as connected as it is now where our society today is more all encompassing. Thus we have greater perspectives. Full blown enlightenment, understanding, and even embodiment DOESN'T automatically = Turquoise. The manner in which you embody God and the lens in which you view God depends upon one's level and stage in Growing Up, as Ken Wilber put's it. Sure there's correlation between deep non-dual understanding and mastery and Turquoise (or I should say, Turquoise has some apparent correlation to deep non-dual understanding) but as it's even said in science, correlation doesn't = causation.

For Purple I'd add shamans (unfortunately I don't know any specific ones) It takes a real solid Yellow to see the healthy versions and also without judgment. @Leo Gura where would you put Immanuel Kant and Aristotle? Blue or Orange? Here are some off the top of my head I'd throw out... Stage Blue: Marcus Aurelius Socrates The Marathon Monks of Mt. Hiei Abraham Lincoln Confucius Chuang Tzu Stage Orange: Tony Robbins Tripp Kramer (Tripp Advice) Sigmund Freud Sam Harris (he got me into enlightenment with the 26 minute guided meditation so I'll give him a shoutout for that at least) Renate Descartes Simon Sinek Stage Green: Ram Dass Koi Fresco/Vishuddha Das Stage Yellow: Mark Hyman Aldous Huxley Carl Jung (though he was peaking into Turquoise by the end of his life) Obama Stage Turquoise: Shunyamurti

If you take real meditation seriously with an honest intent on waking up to the Absolute, then this expectation is hogwash. If you want to dabble in 10 minutes of feeling good with some guided meditations, okay sure, that can feel pleasurable but only because you're not actually fully investing into meditation as a practice, as a discipline, as an art, as a way to collapse your reality and wake up. This is the same thing I hear all the time as a runner when I people go talking about how running is graceful, meditative, peaceful, blah blah blah. Those people who say that a. aren't that serious or love running enough to run long enough or with enough intent to really get good at it and stretch yourself, b. every art is hard. In fact art is the hardest work you'll ever do. Meditation is no different. Zen monks, yogis, nuns, etc. who go through real no bullshit meditation will scare the average person with the description and the intensity of how hard meditation can be. Again, I'm not saying people need to quit their jobs and livelihood to go through that nor does that mean you can't reach/awaken to say the No-Self all because you don't train like a Zen monk or a yogi or something. However, meditation if taken as a legitimate practice is very hard. I don't care about the 0.0001% that meditation and concentration practice comes easy to because these are exceptions. Look at what The Buddha went through before his enlightenment. Read about the Marathon Monks of Mt. Hiei. That's no joke and there's a reason they go through that. So it depends on one's intent with meditation and it's important you're honest with yourself about what your intent is and has been and also what you want it to be. If it's a 10 minute ritual to center your mind and calm down or practice gratitude or something, that's awesome. Just don't confuse that with real meditation (and I don't want the italics on "real" to be taken as though one is superior to the other. Just see it as the difference between someone who goes for a 2 mile run every morning just to wake up and get the blood moving before the day is started and an actual runner).

Meet the people who've actually done that and see the results of that. The last thing you're going to see and think of them as is unhealthy. People devote their entire lives to pursuing truth. This term "unnatural" is a meaningless label. The quality of your pursuits matter. First off, I was making a bigger point here. Not suggesting that he needs to start meditating 20 hours a day. I was pointing out that the very last concern people need to have is whether they're meditating too much. However if he built up too quick that's a different case.

should've put a caption bubble over Tai Lopez in that picture that says "here in my garage"

This took like a month but I finally finished

There are monks and yogis who meditate 20 hours a day... Doing too much is not a valid concern for most people lol

Okay... that’s good lololol

@rounder going to look back at that what you said there man. I really appreciate and believe it or not that did help.

So instead you're actually suggesting I just work my same job and just be a wage slave the rest of my life and never become free and quit my entire life purpose?... I never said anything about "part-time".

You’re understanding of people is naive, shallow, and immature. You’ll learn one day when you decide to get out of your fantasy that every man is equal and look around and start doing your homework and just use common sense. You’re reading what I’m saying as if I’m dismissing practice and like I’m putting people on a pedestal. My level of mastery as a runner is not going to be equal to that of Hicham El Guerouj who holds the Mile World Record in 3:43.13 and Eliud Kipchoge’s 2:01:39 in the Marathon. The average person is not able to do math and physics on the level of people like Einstein. If you actually think the majority of people on planet earth can do this then that shows how much you still have yet to learn about people. Most people who pursue enlightenment don’t even reach enlightenment and that’s not for lack of trying. Even enlightened people don’t all awaken to equal depth. People like Peter Ralston who is an extraordinary master cannot awaken to things like Divine Love because of the way he’s wired. Dont worry. You’ll wake up one day just takes more maturity and growing up and humbling experiences.

This absolutely deluded, naive and just out not true. Saying he is gifted is acknowledging talent. If you think that everything comes down to hard work and that’s the ONLY thing that makes a difference than you’re kidding yourself. I don’t care how hard I worked at basketball, and I worked my face off, there are kids who are just flat out better than me. Period. End of story. East Africans (Ethiopians, Kenyans, Eritreans, etc) are genetically more gifted than most of the world in middle & long distance running hence why they slay most of the world since they came onto the stage. Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and are greater gifted freaks of nature both physically and mentally than most NBA players, much less the rest of the globe. Most people who pursue enlightenment hardcore don’t reach levels of the Buddha or great sages despite tremendous work. I’m not making an excuse for people to be lazy and soft but to deny certain exceptional people’s extrodinary talent and gifts in certain areas is just foolish, naive, and delusional. The argument that everybody has the same potential as everybody else is just false, silly, and just downright not true. Everybody is different. I don’t know what enlightened person is telling you that you have 100% control because that’s an assertion that you have free will to begin with. Your notions of people and their potential and talents is just childish

I have no idea where that example of restaurants came from. So... yeah, don’t really know what to say about that as that’s totally unrelated You're reading my post black and white. Where did I say I was planning on starting a business with 0 cost? I said low cost I have no idea what you’re talking about on your third point. You seem to be all over the place

The busier the more you piss your life doing nonsense which is what most people do. Most people piss their life away being busy. Never said anything about social anxiety. The “business” I want to start is going to take maybe more than a decade before I can start this is shorter term. I need to get ahold of my livelihood and get this part of my life handled. I’m still coming up with ideas.

@Winter I’m not “ragging” on Musk. The guy is a very unique and standout and exceptional individual. 99% of people cannot and will not be able to emulate him for a multitude of reasons. He’s who he is for a reason and to think that people can emulate his work ethic to the degree that he does and get results is more often than not setting themselves up for burnout and failure. Musk serves a role and is a developed individual in a lot of ways but yeah when you reach the end of your life and you’ve been a rat chasing the most cheese and you realize you’re still not fulfilled when, in the end, Musk will be forgotten about (just like 99.999999 of highly successful individuals) and all his work will turn to dust and you’re still not happy and realize that none of that cheese chasing never answered who you nor your deepest questions and aren’t fulfilled, you’ll feel it then... if you’re lucky. I’m not saying there’s something wrong with him. He could contribute more though and in a deeper more profound way if he did wake up to the deeper dimensions of life.

@Winter it doesn’t need to be some huge business... Businesses can be small one man shops... you’re saying I need an HR team, other employees, investors and so forth. I’m talking about a smaller low cost business so that I can leverage my time in order to work on other skills and knowledge. I plan on pursuing enlightenment completely down the road as my vision is starting an ashram and so forth. I agree with a lot of your tips however I’m just trying to make clear the kinda business I’m talking about.