Emerald

Haha! Accurate.

Why are you mad?

That is true in the particular way that you mean it when you use the word "survival". And I am fine with you using the word survival to describe people using selfish actions to benefit themselves at the expense of others... because it comes from the survival instincts. But that is not the way I was using the term survival... as I was using the term to refer to what it traditionally refers to, which is literal life and death. I also consider it a matter of survival (in the way that I mean it) if a person is dealing with scarcity of food and water, even if death is not likely to happen. But let's not monkey around with the semantics of the word "survival" itself as it will just muddy the waters and give people more rope to hang themselves with with regard to their denials... and let people off the hook with regard to facing their own integrity issues, cognitive dissonance, self-deceptions, and blindspots around their own incongruent actions. And of course, someone rationalizing rape or eating animals as a matter of life and death when they don't need to do so to literally survive (aka avoid death) is survival in the way that you mean it around justifying selfish actions taken at the expense of another.

Thank you for checking them out!

\ The Masculine is the spiritual. And the Masculine is about the singularity of God and non-relationship. The Feminine is the material and Earthly plane. And it is about relationship, which requires separation... and a sense of self and other to realize. So, the Feminine is about connection through the lens of the illusion of separation between self and other. And the Masculine is about the realization of oneness, when all is realized as God and there is no longer any sense of separation. So, it is likely that you associated the Feminine with oneness because you relate the Feminine to connection and relationship. But in order to have connection and relationship, you have to have the illusion of the duality of self and other. So, the Masculine is about oneness. The Feminine is about twoness.

What Leo calls survival is like "self focused things we do for our own ends". But what I mean by survival is literally life and death. So, I know he is using Leo's colloquial definition of survival to justify eating meat as a 'self focused thing he's doing towards his own ends'... but dishonestly mincing it with the weight and gravity of the "life and death" meaning of survival. It's a bit like how sex is part of survival from the colloquial way the Leo uses it. And then someone would dishonestly use Leo's definition of survival to justify raping someone to themselves because "Sex is part of survival... therefore raping someone is valid because I need it in order to survive". But I personally, don't have any problem with people eating animals if they literally need it to survive or if they are dealing with genuine food scarcity. If I was starving and I didn't have any other food sources or I didn't know where my next meal was coming from, I'd have no qualms with eating animals or animal products. I just disagree with consuming animals out of pleasure and convenience... which is the reason why 90%+ of people in first world countries consume animals and animal products (regardless of whichever other justifications they might provide to obscure that truth from themselves). But I don't see people as evil for partaking in eating animals... just unaware and disconnected from the realities of the suffering. It's just like I was before I decided to go Vegan... in a state of cognitive dissonance and denial about my own choices and the outcomes they are tied to that are incongruent with my values. That's why I never try to convince people to go Vegan... but instead to simply be honest with themselves about their true motivations to consume animal products and to examine if that's actually in a alignment with their own values or not. Like, even if a person chooses not to go Vegan... they should at least be honest with themselves. And of course, we all feel better and more on solid ground when our actions are in alignment with our values. The issue is that a very large percentage of people (maybe half or more) hold Vegan values where they don't want animals to be harmed for food if there are other food sources available... and who would avoid it altogether if they had to slaughter the animal themselves. But most of these people with Vegan values don't live in integrity with them. Hence the rationalizations and justifications and shadow boxing with imaginary Vegans or Vegans on the internet.

My experience is that, every time a meat eater goes into a "complaining about Vegans' or "Arguing with imaginary Vegans in my head" argument... it's almost always about doing mental gymnastics to justify prioritizing pleasure over animal life and animal suffering. Most people don't agree with this. But they have to find a way to lie to themselves so that they can convince themselves that they're not acting out of integrity with their own values. And they project their own self-judgments for living out of integrity with their values onto Vegans (and that's true, even if the Vegan is being vocal about their Veganism.)

You have the freedom to think different ways about things.... and I want you to actually own and live your own values. But my claim is that you're being dishonest with yourself about what your values are. When people do mental gymnastics and come up with these narratives to defend themselves against 'the judgmental Vegans'... they are actually responding to their own cognitive dissonance around engaging in actions that are not aligned to their own values. And they are projecting their own judgments onto Vegans. Let's be real... what made you create this whole narrative justification that you cooked up in the first place? Did some Vegans come up and criticize you while you were eating meat? Or did you just know of the existence of Vegans and imagine some Vegans criticizing you and get into an argument in your head where you had to defend yourself against Vegans? I'm not telling you you need to go Vegan. I'm just encouraging you to be honest with yourself about your own self-deceptions and feelings of cognitive dissonance surrounding engaging in actions that are incongruent to your own beliefs and values.

Those claims about Vegans missing essential micronutrients aren't supported by any kind of valid research. And you can find personal anecdotal evidence for literally anything. But they only ever form a sample size of one. So, you can't look to these videos about Vegans who are no longer Vegan and deduce anything about the health of the Vegan diet. But if you look at the actual research data and meta-analyses, plant-based diets tend to be associated with better health outcomes across the board... especially with regard to longevity and reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke which are the number one killers. Also, there are people who claim Veganism to hide their eatings disorder. Consider an anorexic or orthorexic person who wants a convenient excuse to refuse food when it's offered to them. Saying, "Sorry, I can't eat that. I'm Vegan." or even "Sorry, I can't eat that. I'm doing Keto, Paleo, Atkins, etc." is a useful cover for an eating disorder. But most Vegans don't have eating disorders. And as a Vegan, I could actually afford to lose a few pounds myself. But honestly, all of this is beside the point that I was making. My point is the meat eaters who feel guilty about eating meat will find all sorts of mental gymnastics and unsupported ideas to justify their own dietary choices to themselves... and will look for ways to judge, demonize, and invalidate the choices of Vegans to live in alignment with their values. And that's because the existence of Vegans make them feel guilty that someone else is living their values when they are not. But at least you are honest in that you say that you value the convenience and enjoyment of eating animals and animal products over the animal's life and well-being... even if you are incorrect about the health factors. I personally value animal's lives and well-being over pleasure or convenience myself, which is why I decided to go Vegan... as it was important to me to bring my actions into integrity with my values. But some people just don't share those same values and feel that their own pleasure and convenience is more important than the lives of other sentient beings. And in that case, I want them to live in alignment with their values even if I disagree with those values.

More mental gymnastics to justify yourself to yourself.

Eating for flavor and texture is NOT survival as you don't need it to survive. And it is just a self-deception to frame an enjoyment and flavor and texture as a survival need. But even if the enjoyment of flavor and texture were a survival need (which it isn't), you could also source your enjoyments of flavors and textures from plant-based food without needing to partake in products that come from the suffering and death of sentient beings. And the idea of there being this dichotomy of delicious animal foods versus bland plant-foods is untrue. As a Vegan, the food that I eat now is a lot more varied and flavorful compared to when I used to eat meat and other animal products. In fact, most of the flavor we attribute to animal foods come from the seasonings.. which are plants.

My issue is NOT that we think about this issue differently. If you really didn't care about the deaths and sufferings of animals, you wouldn't bother to make these bullcrap defensive arguments that you don't really care about. The issue is that, you are a non-Vegan with Vegan values. And you are clearly not okay with your own choice to eat meat, as your argument has guilty all over it and the desire to assuage that guilt. But because you want to maintain the status quo of your diet and keep enjoying the pleasure of eating meat, you have to find a way to go into cognitive dissonance and square the circle. Hence, why you create this narrative. And I just want you to be honest about what you're doing when you're making that argument about "preserving culture" and so "I'm the good guy" and "Vegans are the true bad guys". It's just mental gymnastics to create a narrative to maintain cognitive dissonance and assuage your own guilt about eating meat. Just be honest and say, "I like the taste of meat. And the pleasure that I get from eating it is something that I value more than the animal's life. And I am okay with animals suffering as long as I can get the momentary pleasure of consuming them."

I said to be honest. It is not harder to survive on a Vegan diet. In fact, statistically Vegans tend to live longer than non-Vegans and have better health outcomes across the board. But regardless of that, do you personally eat meat to survive? Like, would you die if you stopped eating meat, dairy, and eggs? Or do you just eat meat, dairy, and eggs because enjoy the flavor and texture? Self-honesty is important when answering these questions.

Be honest. In your current situation, do you actually eat meat for survival? Or do you eat meat because you enjoy the flavor and texture?

Just be honest and say that you want to continue eating animals because they taste good... and that you value the flavor and pleasure of eating them more than you value their lives or their subjective experience of suffering. That would actually be honest if you stated that, and I'd leave you alone about it. As a Vegan, my only goal is to get people to be honest about their own values regarding the killing and suffering of animals for pleasure. And if someone is just like "I don't care about animals at all.... and I am indifferent to their deaths and suffering." then I'm going to leave them alone about their culinary choices as that person is being honest about their values and their actions are already in alignment with them. What I don't like is when people are dishonest with themselves and they try to do mental gymnastics to justify their choice to consume animal products... using things they don't really give a crap about in any other circumstance as a shield to defend themselves from their own judgments of themselves. This happens all the time, because non-Vegans with Vegan values are always in cognitive dissonance regarding the lack of integrity between their values and actions... and trying to find some argument or another to justify their choices to the outside world. And non-Vegans with Vegan values will use ANY defense they think will work... and immediately abandon that defense when it doesn't work because they are looking for whatever will shield themselves from their own feelings of guilt. And then they project their own repressed guilt about their choices to prioritize pleasure over sentient life onto both silent and vocal Vegans... when it is just their own judgmental voice that they hear in the silent Vegans' heads or coming out of the vocal Vegans' mouths. Be honest... you really don't care that much about the richness of cultural cuisines or about the preservation of cultures more generally. You just want to use the goodly notion of 'the preservation of culture' to justify your choice to eat meat so that your choice to eat meat becomes "good" through the narrative you've woven and the choice to abstain from eating meat become "the true evil". That way, you can maintain your cognitive dissonance and assuage your guilt from acting out of alignment with your own values... and avoid feeling like "the bad guy" in your own eyes. And to do so, Vegans have to become "the bad guy" instead within your narrative, so you can externalize your own guilt about consuming animals.... and that you can be the valid one and Vegans the invalid ones. This is always what non-Vegans with Vegan values do to go into cognitive dissonance and justify the actions that are misaligned with their values. And if it isn't a "preserving culture argument" it's the "what about humane slaughter practices" argument... or the "farm animal overpopulation argument"... or the "God created animals for humans to eat them" argument... etc. There are probably about 20 common defenses non-Vegans use... but none of them are actual about the substances of the defense. All of them are about the function of defense itself as the non-Vegan either doesn't really believe it or doesn't actually care about it past the function of arguing with Vegans.

The issue here is that you're thinking about things as man-likeness and woman-likeness with a heavy emphasis on gender norms and common human gender expressions. But the Masculine and Feminine supersedes human conceptions of gender and human gender expressions. But these gender expressions are also influenced by the interplay between the Masculine and Feminine as well. Think of it more as Yin and Yang. And with the energetic Masculine and Feminine (Yin and Yang), I have experienced this directly in my medicine journeys. And with experience, you can get a sense of what these "vibes" are like and you can intuitively spot them. Once you perceive them directly, you can get a sense of their "rhythm" and notice their patterns playing out EVERYWHERE. But with regard to the archetypal Masculine and Feminine, this is more of an intellectual knowledge. And you can learn about them from Jungian authors and recognize how they play out in art, religious texts, myths, fairy tales, tv shows, movies, dreams, and archetypal systems of meaning... and they are like intellectual snapshots of Yin and Yang in the form of common symbols that exist across many cultures and eras. One of the more helpful ways to understand the Masculine and Feminine polarity are to understand that the Masculine is doing without being (non-physical)... and the Feminine is being without doing (physical). But with the synthesis between the Masculine and Feminine, you get the creation of all living and non-living systems... from the cosmos to an atom. You get animated being. And the Feminine is like the ocean while the Masculine is like the movement of the currents in the ocean. There is a quote that goes something like "The Masculine without the Feminine is a ghost. The Feminine without the Masculine is a corpse. Either way, without the opposite integrated, the result you get is dead."

Thank you! I'm glad that my posts have helped you see things from a new angle. My medicine journeys (mostly Ayahuasca) have been a source of my direct experiences of the Masculine and Feminine. But I also learned a lot about the archetypal Feminine and Masculine from Jungian authors... and more particularly in regards to learning about archetypes. I also learned different systems that incorporate a lot of archetypal symbolism (like the Tarot). And in using these systems as tools to explore myself and help my clients explore themselves, I gleaned a lot of insights about the Masculine and Feminine polarities that way as well. If you'd like to understand more about how to integrate the Masculine and/or the Feminine, here are some videos that I made on the topic...

Yes, the Masculine and Feminine is only a perspective from within the illusion. So on the absolute level, it is a false dichotomy.

@Xonas Pitfall One thing that's important to take note of is that there are different vantage points to look at the Masculine and feminine from. From one angle, there are archetypally Feminine and Masculine symbols and qualities that are recognized as such across cultures and eras. And these symbols are like a snapshot of a multifaceted thing that always contains its opposite (like the Dao). And form this vantage point, there is the Masculine and the Feminine as distinct "essences" from one another but that play out in all living and non-living systems. From the angle of the absolute, all dichotomies are false. And so, from this angle, the Masculine and Feminine is one and the same... indistinguishable from one another. And from yet another angle, we could say that while some things are more energetically Masculine or Feminine... each thing contains its opposite. And in that sense, all things are infinitely Masculine and Feminine... in the same way that any number you can think of is equally far off from infinity. To clarify that more, it's important to see that opposites grow out of one another. For example, the archetypal Masculine is linked to the elements of air and fire... and have to do with the non-physical, abstraction, the intellect, and the spiritual. And the divine Masculine is specifically associated with sacred geometry... ideal non-physical forms. But it is precisely because the Masculine is associated with the non-physical that it is able to express its ideal and geometric ways in the Feminine world of matter... and it is able to shape matter to the whims of the intellect. It is similar to how air oxidizes metal. (air being Masculine and metal being Feminine). The Masculine is subtle and non-physical but it engenders change and growth in the Feminine... similar to how a tiny ephemeral sperm catalyzes change in a much larger and more long-lasting egg. So, the ability to be grounded and pragmatic (which are elements of the Feminine principle) requires you to be able to organize your intellectual paradigm (which is Masculine) in such a way that you can impregnate the tangible Feminine World of Matter with the sparks of insight and inspiration that spring forth form your Masculine imaginal world. And ironically, the internal is the Feminine and the external is the Masculine. And the Feminine is subjective while the Masculine is objective. So, ironically your Masculine imaginal world grows out of your Feminine internal subjective experience. And the Feminine tangible 3-d world is external to you and objective (and thus exists within the Masculine). In this way, there are archetypally and energetically Feminine and Masculine phenomenon... but they always contain or exist with its opposite.

Physical men would be called androgynous from the perspective of societal gender norms.... as being physically fit is seen as a culturally Masculine quality despite physicality itself being archetypally and energetically Feminine. And spiritual men tend to be more Masculine-focused in the sense that they are focused on the non-physical rather than the physical. The archetypal Masculine is associated with the elements air and fire because the Masculine is about the abstract, spiritual, intellectual, and non-tangible. And air and water create change in substances but aren't a solid substance themselves. In contrast, the archetypal Feminine is associated with the elements Earth and water because the Feminine is about the concrete, physical, material, and tangible. And Earth and water are about being and are tangible and can acted upon and imbued with the Masculine elements that change their chemical structure. So, while being physically fit is associated with male gender norms... it is a Feminine principled quality. And while spiritual men tend to be perceived as gentle (which is not a male gender norm)... the focus towards the non-physical and transcendence of physicality is Masculine principled.

The spiritual is the Masculine... and the physical is the Feminine. So, yes... libidinal/sexual energy is Feminine. This is why, in Kundalini yoga, with the symbol of Shiva and Shakti... the libidinal energy is said to be like Shakti who is a Goddess in the form of a snake and is coiled three times at the base of the spine as waiting potential. And the awakened Shakti (or risen snake) is a symbol of integration of the Masculine and Feminine.... and awakening from the human perspective and relates to the ability to express the Shakti energy towards both spiritual and creative outputs. What must be understood about Masculine and Feminine in the archetypal and energetic sense... is that there are often divergences from both gender norms and the ways that men and women tend to generally be. The Masculine and Feminine were named by people who want to use a human symbol to understand these primordial energies. But we make a mistake when we only relate these dynamics to human gender. That said, women do actually have a stronger connection to libidinal energy than men, generally speaking. Though men generally tend to channel their libidinal energy in a more focused way... where women tend to just abide and marinate more in the soup of that energy without externalizing it as often. So, you're seeing a difference there that comes more from the Masculine principled tendency towards externalization and the Feminine principled tendency toward internalization. But women generally have a greater connection to libidinal energy in an internal and being sense... as we create life inside our bodies. So, like Shakti and Shiva... the Shakti stays dormant until it rises up the channel of the spine to meet Shiva. So, a woman needs to integrate the Masculine to be able to tame and channel that libidinal energy outwards towards creative and productive works. Otherwise, it is just a marination in those energies on an internal level. But with regard to how Masculine and Feminine can diverge from gender norms and how men and women tend to be... men are actually more Feminine principled in the sense that men are more physically equipped than women with more resilient bodies. And women tend to be more likely to possess the Masculine-principled quality of communication... as we are usually more expressive (verbally and otherwise) than men. But of course, these are broad strokes generalizations that aren't always true... just patterns that can be noticed where our gender norms and patterns diverge from the energetic Masculine and Feminine.

Yes, the embodiment path is enhanced by its opposite. So, the Feminine path is dualistic... and it about appreciating embodiment and limitation through contrast with transcendence and the infinite. And there can be glimpses of Truth which bring greater meaning to the experience of the illusion through a contrast of opposites. But the end goal is the embodiment of the illusion... and the awakening to Truth is only a tool for enhancing the experience of the illusion form the perspective of this path. But with the transcendence path... it is non-dual. So, it is about embracing both relative truth and illusion... in service of transcending the attachment to the illusion and abiding in Truth. Ultimately both have similar means... but different end-goals.

@Salvijus @Wilhelm44 The issue is interpreting "Masculine and Feminine" only through the lens of human gender. The Masculine and Feminine exist in all living and nonliving systems and supersede yet inform human gender expressions. The issue is just that human beings are very human centric. And we can understand these polar "energies" best through relating them to man-likeness and woman-likeness... as male/female is the closest human expressions we have to these two polarities. Hence, why we refer to them as Feminine/Masculine and understand them through male and female symbolism. But it's really more like Yin and Yang. The problem arises when we filter these understandings through the notion of "This is what men and women ought to do." or "This is how men and women always are." Every person contains both the Masculine and the Feminine... just like all other living and non-living systems. And the archetypal and energetic Masculine and Feminine sometimes coincide with the gender norms of a particular society... but often diverges. For example, you both cited Love as a Feminine element of awakening. But Love is actually Masculine principled. It's just that our gender norms characterize love as being more in association with the Feminine because contemporary women tend to consciously value love more than men do... generally speaking. But this is just love in the way that we conceptualize of it in society, which is more like connection and relationship... which are Feminine principled. So, it's a matter of a word-based mix-up that causes us to characterize Love as Feminine... when what we mean by love is connection, romance, relationship, etc. which have to do with the relationship between separate human beings. And separation is the Feminine polarity... while oneness is the Masculine polarity. This is the major issue that so many people want to talk about the Masculine and Feminine but haven't had enough direct experience to speak about them accurately without mincing them together with social constructs and notions of human gender. Now, there are some subtle but important differences between men and women as general groups in the broad strokes. And you will find that men will gravitate more towards transcendence-based paths... and women will gravitate more towards embodiment based paths. And that is because the transcendence-based path is more archetypally and energetically Masculine and the embodiment-based path is more archetypally and energetically Feminine.

What I have experienced is that there are many 'games' that God plays with itself through human incarnations. So, while Consciousness itself is non-dual... there is no single path or game that Consciousness plays with itself through the human experience. But the most apt descriptions based on my medicine journeys is to call my path (the path of embodiment) as Feminine and the path I was previously on (the path of transcendence) as the Masculine path. Truthfully, most people are on the path of embodiment, as truly resonating with the path of transcendence is quite rare. It's just not a very popular game to want to play as a human being... even though enlightenment sounds good to the ears of the ego. Even most people who claim to be walking the path of transcendence don't actually want to deep down. That was me before I became conscious of my true spiritual preferences. Honestly, if I really preferred the path of transcendence, I'd probably have incarnated as some male monk somewhere who lives his entire life in a monastery.

Yes, definitely. One of the reasons why it seems to show me these things in my journeys is because it revealed to me in an earlier journey that the life's purpose is mercy... as it's showed me that the reason why God's consciousness created the illusion of Emerald in the first place is mercy. When the point of consciousness that typically sits behind my eyes was exposed to the everythingness element of the infinite, the experience of the infinite was producing a lot of suffering for the point of consciousness that typically sits behind my eyes as there was resistance to that fact of infinite suffering always existing from the perspective of the infinite. And no matter what, infinite suffering would always re-arise. And the way I would describe it is that, this point of consciousness was one with the rest of God's infinite consciousness and simply was God's consciousness. But the point of consciousness that sits behind my eyes went into resistance towards infinite suffering that can never be solved (as that is an element of the infinite). And out of mercy towards itself, it split "my" point of consciousness away from itself... in order to allow that point of consciousness mercy through allowing it to go into a state of unconsciousness to the infinite and imposing blinders on this consciousness while in its incarnation into the illusion of Emerald. And that way, through the vehicle of the illusion of Emerald's life, this fragmented off point of God's consciousness can experience the illusion of finiteness and the mercy that comes from limitation... and not having to be responsible for the infinite and to always allow all things. And out of mercy and love towards itself in these kinds of situations, it allows itself the illusion of being a tiny drop, when it is actually the ocean. So, there can be this imperfect illusory Emerald character with a beginning and an end... who only dies once... and can only experience but so much suffering... and who prefers the good to the bad. And it's that, in contrast to knowing and loving all and grieving infinite griefs, which is what God consciousness experiences... and is fully capable of doing so because (out of love) it can cut away the parts of itself that cannot allow the experience of infinite griefs. It was like, it allowed me (aka God) to surrender my (aka God's) responsibilities to be present with infinite suffering to give itself mercy and a vacation from the infinite. But it also showed me it has many "release valves" through which to mitigate the suffering aspects of itself would otherwise experience if those release valves didn't exist. And one such release valve is simply incarnation into the illusion of finiteness. Another such release valve is incarnation into the illusion of finiteness and waking up to the pure empty consciousness. And it showed me the image of monks when it communicated this to me. And yes, those who have been particularly burned by the physical world may prefer the latter... which is likely why there are so many world religions that have to do with transcending all that's Earthly and material. When you are in a finite Hell... then all you can want is to be released from it into an infinite Heaven. And there are experiences of God's consciousness that are like that. But when you experience infinite Hell (and knowing and loving all things in infinity and grieving all griefs for an eternity at the deepest level of grieving possible), then the finite is a much more fitting release valve. From the perspective of God's consciousness that has no resistance to suffering and can love all things without resistance, however, it has shown me the game it plays that involves the experience of both mercy and suffering which blend seamlessly together where there is no sense of where one ends and the other begins... and move like a thrilling roller coaster through infinite consciousness. This point of consciousness was too resistant to holding space for that duality of mercy and suffering to transcend that particular dualism... and this is where my consciousness split from the rest of God's consciousness. And the Emerald story was spun up. And it made my life's purpose all about mercy... which has been a constant pulse throughout my entire human experience but was only made clear in that journey.