lmfao

@Thetruthseeker I know the feeling man. I spent 90 minutes this morning watching dog rescue videos and wild animal videos on YouTube. How am I supposed to overcome the cuteness. #1 obstacle to enlightenment tbh.

@Leo Gura book > film.

@Joseph Maynor @Joseph Maynorthis sounds like fun. Pros: 1) Green, at least to a greater degree than orange, sees through the illusion that material wealth brings satisfaction and happiness. 2) Green sees the "value" in human relationships for life satisfaction. 3) Green people are conscious of the impact their actions have on other people around them and the environment, and hence create a better society. 4) Green is typically more emotionally honest and expressive with themselves and with others. Thus means that they can more easily troubleshoot their personal emotional issues than orange. 5) And to follow on from the last point, they tend to be more empathetic and caring for the wellbeing of other people. 6) They are open to spirituality. Can start to see the limits in hyper rationality. Cons: 1) They think that all problems can be fixed through persistent use of empathy. 2) Their empathy can be misguided, and they end up casting many people into two groups: predator and prey. They treat the predators with hostility and animosity whilst carrying with themselves a huge sense of moral superiority. In their crusade for justice they become arbiters of injustice (e.g. SJW's who demonise people for being white). 3) And just to elaborate from the last point, excessive green let their emotions get the better of them and cloud their judgement. 4) They can moralise a lot and hence restrict their wholistic perception of reality. I'm struggling to come up with more items to this list.

@who chit Even if I'm in a nondual state and am connected deeply to the present moment, I don't see "intelligence" in my experience. I understand what you mean when you ask someone to pay attention to their experience whilst not giving any energy to the abstractions they concoct about their experience. There is unfathomable depth to conscious experience indeed, but the word "intelligence" isn't something which points towards experience for me. There can be interconnectedness between things, but I still don't resonate with the word "intelligence" because I see that word as a relatively useless abstraction about reality. I think the "problem" here is just that my image of intelligence is different to the image of intelligence you're trying to convey. We both have perhaps experienced the same thing, it's just that we describe it differently.

@molosku @Major Tom thanks

@Charlotte Leo described infinite intelligence as a facet of consciousness. I cant say that I understand or have experienced what Leo means when he talks about infinite intelligence.

@John Iverson Nice. Are you asking people to debate or are you saying that the video is a debate?

@SaaraSabina It's time to worship this enlightenmened being. Only a true sage could be 26% turquoise and 20% yellow.

@Nagma I find it slightly difficult to give advice since I don't know a whole lot about you, but I'll try anyway. You sound depressed and tired of life, and I've been in that position a lot. I was practically suicidal half a year ago, and I've been on anti-depressants for 7-8 months and I'm just starting to try and get off of them. If you want to try and improve your mood, start exercising and start doing consciousness work, whether it is meditation or yoga. Even if you suck at meditation you'll still see glimpses of enlightenment and true peace of mind if you give meditation a good shot. If you practice meditation, you will start to see just how it is that your mind is constantly lost in thought, and this results in suffering. You also sound dissatisfied with your current life situation. You are 18, you still have the oppertunity to "figure out" what you really want from your (present) /(future) (career) /(education). I'm 17 and I've decided to study physics at university because I genuinely enjoy it, even if it is the case that I will not make much money after my degree. I wouldn't be fulfilled by becoming a doctor or something. And so to you, I would say that you need to find something you genuinely enjoy and pursue it with your heart and soul.

Besides trying to be mindful and non-judgmental of thoughts/feelings, is there any "special" advice I could use for when I feel depressed and unmotivated after meditating? My mood today got worse after meditating today, and its not the first time. As well as feeling depressed I feel really irritable and pissed off for reasons I don't know. Am I unconsciously getting lost in thought which is "ruining" my mood?

@White I'm trying to say that someone who deeply connects to the present moment will "see the beauty" in reality irregardless of how it manifests. When you let go of your ego, your consciousness will not be engulfed in neurotic anger in the face of any external circumstances even if somebody is trying to physically harm you.

@White I don't think awake people get "enraged" at anything at all.

@Outer Harambe memes are fucking amazing. I love it.

@ValiantSalvatore So I've just read your response in which you typed your thoughts on integral theory and the usefulness of it. I'm gonna talk a bit about metaphysics here, although it might be a useless/pointless thing. In order to make any truth claims about reality, we have to make assumptions, and paradoxically enough I cannot construct the messages in the sentences I'm typing without making assumptions. Truth is a tricky thing, and our understanding of truth is woven into all discussions we have about things, whether it is integral theory or any model we hold about reality. I think that if any truth does exist, it is beyond conceptualization yet I'm trying to explain that truth is beyond conceptualization by using concepts. I think that if people want to understand reality as it is, they just need to meditate and pay attention to raw experience. You reach a state of being which cant be described with words. In this state, notions of the past and future vanquish. The unfathomable depth and breath to the contents of your consciousness are irreducible in what they fundamentally are. In this state you realize that all things, whether it is your thoughts or your actions or the sounds you hear or the behavior of other people, is all just a single happening. Thoughts in your consciousness are as much you as every other aspect of your consciousness. You don't know why reality exists, you know that it just is. Now I only typed all of that so to explain that I think that if people want to develop themselves, the most important thing for them to do is do consciousness work. Integral theory sounds fun and interesting to me, and I agree with you that it is a cool tool. But I perhaps disagree with you partially here, since I think that "personal development" ("personal development" being analogous to becoming enlightened here) is not very much helped by using these models of reality. I think people should drop all models of reality and do consciousness work.

@stevegan928 I would say that it's only a vocal minority of people on this forum who are "misusing Spiral Dynamics".

@Charlotte Indeed you are right.

@Onecirrus If I was you I would not focus on spiral dynamics too much if you want to develop yourself. Do consciousness work, and see where it takes you. Spiral Dynamics is not useful for anyone pursuing enlightenment. I've talked more in depth about my thoughts on it here The idea that all human development follows this linear transition of stages is just absurd to me. Everyone is inherently different in their temperament and neurology. What is healthy for one person is unhealthy for another . Developmental milestones for one person are not developmental milestones for another. People need to meditate and connect themselves to reality and the present moment, and your body/mind will proceed to correct itself naturally, however that might manifest. Everyone needs to find their own path, and the evolution that people go through in finding their path may differ from Spiral Dynamics. Sure there may be some value in looking into Spiral Dynamics, but I would recommend against taking the model too seriously.

@Charlotte @Charlotte (mobile won't let me delete the second "@Charlotte") I had monkey mind for ages when meditating so I just quickly extended the timer on my phone. I dont know if I'm meditating with expectations. When most people make decide to meditate, its because they are trying to reach something they feel they don't already have. And it's the same for me. But whilst I'm meditating I, for the most part, "forget" what my expectations are as I focus my awareness on the present moment.

@Hero of Time good shit my dude. Don't feel too disappointed. For the first 50 minutes of me meditating today I had complete monkey mind, so I meditated for 30 minutes longer to reach the state I was looking for. If you fail at reaching the thoughtless state, just keep trying to reach it. "Trying" is probably not the right word here lol. To reach deep with meditation you have to resolve the paradox of forcing yourself to be unforceful.

The video provides an interesting scientific view on how it may be the case that depression in many instances is partially (caused by)/(a result of) inflammation in your body. Inflammation is known to be your body's response to various harmful stimuli, like pathogens. The guy cites studies, and he say that stress can cause inflammation.

Just wanted to hear your thoughts on some of these models for human psychology, and whether you know of any additional models you find good. I want to hear your thoughts on anything I talk about, and also your thoughts on anything new you can think to tell me. Models that I use: 1) MBTI I've found it to be good in understanding many parts of myself [INTP here]. MBTI has 4 dimensions of measurement, with each dimension having 2 poles. Your MBTI type is based upon the poles you are closest to. A problem that I have with MBTI is that people who are near the middle of two poles (e.g. Perceiving and judging) will their behaviour less accurately described through MBTI. Everyone is on a sliding scale of traits, and so to put people into one of 16 categories is bound to cause some confusion. I've heard the most "educated" proponents of MBTI on YouTube to say that MBTI tells you the "why" of someones behaviour, and not the "what", and this means that people in a given type can express themselves in a wide variety of ways. Even so with that last paragraph, MBTI has some flaws or it needs to be interpreted with lots of nuance if you want accuracy. 2) Big Five Aspects Scale This is an interesting one. You have five main dimensions of measurements of personality in this model, and each dimension is composed of two dimensions. E.g. Conscientiousness is composed of orderliness and industriousness. The model puts people into a percentile rank for each dimension of measurement, which means that your score is inextricably linked to scores of other people. E. G. You can be 1st percentile in agreeableness meaning you are less agreeable than 98/100 people. This model acknowledges that everyone is on a spectrum for a myriad of traits, and it tries to make room for the almost infinite number of different trait combinations in humans. To understand this, watching Jordan Peterson would be excellent. Lecture 14 he starts talking about the model. Lectures 17-21 talk about it as well. There was another lecture which is related to big five but it had too much jargon for me to understand. Maybe you can understand it. You can pay for a test made by Jordan Peterson to get a personality profile https://understandmyself.com 3)Spiral Dynamics This is the first model I've talked about where consciousness work might directly come into play. Now there's this model, and it's trying to map out "human development" but I'm not sure what exactly this model is all about. I'm going to copy and paste what I've written in another topic, talking about what I think about enlightenment and its relationship to spiral dynamics: It seems to me that your stage isn't necessarily related to the "degree to which you are enlightened" [I'm using quotation marks because I think words and concepts fail in capturing the nature of enlightenment]. Because of this, idk how to view spiral dynamics. I say this because it seems completely feasible to me that someone who embodies stage Red could be extremely conscious and enlightened. You could get a non neurotypical person who murders as a hobby but is at the same time, emotionally and psychologically healthy. The same goes for any many other stages. And a second point I want to mention is that someone in stage (x+1) will not necessarily be more conscious that someone in stage (x). Sure, there might be a correlation between your stage and consciousness level. But the fact that being in a higher stage doesn't gaurentee that you are of higher consciousness is indicitave of the fact that the foundational criteria used to put someone in a stage is separate from degree of consciousness, or the criteria is based upon on how different degrees of consciousness typically manifest (in contrast to telling you how different degrees of consciousness atypically manifests).

@Faceless Yeah I look at these models for fun. Models aren't useful for enlightenment. True personal development requires closing your mouth and sharpening your awareness.

@Quanty Indeed it is. But it is not the case that most questions (on this forum) are a waste of time?

@ValiantSalvatore woah looks like you've got the good stuff. I believe you when you say that meditation will accelerate your development. It's the only consciousness work I do. Psychedelics sound like fun as well. How would learning integral theory would move you up stages (which analogous to developing yourself)?Is integral theory theory related to spiral dynamics? I skimmed over the content in that first pdf you sent and it looks like a slight variation of the spiral dynamics model. IS that right?

Leo I love the video you made today man. I think you nailed down the essence of stage blue and how it typically manifests. Watching your video made me anxious lol because it triggered bad memories I had with stage blue thinking, since I'm an atheist living with a Muslim Pakistani family in Britain. I've had a lot of experience with the type of thinking you talked about in the video. I've visited Pakistan many times to meet my family as a child and I've interacted with Muslim communities a lot. I had to regularly go to a madrasa since when I was a young child to just a few years ago when I was 14. I feel hateful towards religious fundamentalists because of the psychological and social damage they can do to you. I will probably have future problems because of the messed up social conditioning stage blue upbringing gives you. I'm finding it hard to release this hatred I feel towards stage blue and towards the people who exhibit it. Whenever "shit gets real" and personal for you it becomes a lot harder to remain present and mindful, but I've started to realise a little that my hatred is the result of my ego not being able to just let go. But I shall try to let go. Even if I release hatred of stage blue people, they sure as hell ain't gonna be the type of people I usually hang out with. I'm very a politically incorrect person with dark humour who finds many of societies institutions to be a joke. Whenever I see a situation my natural inclination is to not moralise. Very different from self people who get offended and emotional over the most petty things.