tatsumaru

Seems like a bunch of people are choosing to substitute the "reality" of life with other self-simulated dimensions featuring even more abstract and less-real versions of reality such as games, porn, and tv shows and just generally attempt to trick their brains into believing that something that's not happening is actually happening in a misguided attempt to meet their unmet needs. Oddly enough I believe that these simulations when matched with our present social conditions are actually useful and here's why. I believe most relationships as they are currently happening are completely meaningless, between incompatible people, sustained by lies, and really just an elaborate scheme to obtain sex that in most cases doesn't even lead to procreation. Incredible energy is wasted in the pursuit of meaningless sex and to a certain degree porn gives you that meaningless sex at a much lower cost. It's also proven that porn decreases violent crimes as frustrated rapists for example can now get their hit from watching porn rather than doing the rape themselves. A lot of the time they aren't interested in the specific person they are raping so why even bother. They can now watch rape on demand for free. With all that being said, I am wondering how come, sociopathic leaders, dictators, and corrupt governments aren't doing the same either. Why aren't they choosing to play GTA V and watch House of Cards rather than actually act out on their sick desires in the "real" world? For some reason, these people aren't satisfied with running their wars in Age of Empires. What is it that compels these people to not be satisfied with simulated power? Is it simply because most of the leaders are old and weren't brought up around games? I doubt that, my mom is old and she's already hooked on Facebook and TV shows. Is it that only desperate people are driven to partake in simulations (i.e. x can't find a girlfriend and that's why they are watching porn) and if so what gave these sociopaths the confidence to not feel powerless and desperate? Maybe it's their lack of remorse which allows them to cross boundaries that other people wouldn't, that gives them the edge, and therefore the confidence. Just wondering is all. I'd really prefer if Jerome Powell would play accountant on sim city rather than tamper with our hard earned value.

I have spent a big chunk of my life as an entrepreneur trying to understand what does it actually mean to create value and improve something. Initially it seemed clear to me that making life better is simply about increasing happiness and reducing suffering by addressing people's needs as per Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So for example if someone got shot in the jaw and the bullet destroyed their jaw and they couldn't chew properly anymore then creating a solution that could restore their jaw back to health would be considered value. However... A big chunk of what spirituality is all about is that everything is fine as it is and it is the ignorance that is causing the suffering, not life being imperfect and needing improvement. So from spirituality's perspective, if we take the same example from above, guns only exist due to ignorance and therefore if people weren't ignorant, no one would be shot in the jaw, and therefore there would be no need for surgeons who fix jaws etc. etc. Of course this is an extreme oversimplification but you can see where I am going with this. If people knew what to eat and how to take care of their teeth they wouldn't need dentists, if people knew how to take care of their bodies there wouldn't be heart attacks and there would be no need for cardiothoracic surgery. If people knew how to raise their children properly there would be no childhood trauma and no need for child psychologist etc. etc. Granted, we have some needs like eating, shelter and water that can't be solved through letting go and meditation, but even highly conservative societies like the Amish who barely use any technology have all of these met, therefore there's no need for innovation in that regard. The only thing that would be needed from that perspective is to dissolve people's ignorance about what the journey is and then just sit on our porches, appreciate the sunsets and wait to die. That would mean no life purpose, for there's nothing to be improved or done except for letting go of ignorance and therefore there would be no entrepreneurship either for all entrepreneurial pursuits will be essentially grounded in ignorance. I mean after all the Buddha didn't own any ergonomic chairs or blenders and he didn't give two shits about measuring his heart rate with a fitbit wearable heart rate tracker. A counter-point to all that is that the size of our population increases, and as it increases it modifies its environment in order to accommodate all the individuals. Caves become houses, houses become blocks, blocks become skyscrapers etc. As this complexity arises, so does arise the complexity of fulfilling the basic needs such as eating. There are no fruit and deer running around freely in NYC to hunt and gather and therefore entrepreneurs need to figure out how to create infrastructures which deliver food to citizens. However you could still argue that the main reason people concentrate in these big cities is because of meaningless jobs rooted in ignorance and that if these jobs were to be realized as ultimately meaningless then these big cities wouldn't need to exist and since the majority of planet Earth is actually unpopulated people could just go back to owning houses and their own gardens and therefore they could live like the Amish and not need anything and therefore there would extremely little to no need at all for entrepreneurs and there would be no life purpose. It is possible that I am trying to turn something dynamic into something static. For example maybe people have certain problems right now that they won't have in 1000 years from now and that's fine. It is tempting to think of value as the pursuit of harmony relative to our changing environment. Maybe entrepreneurship is a finite puzzle that once solved will delete itself for society will become fully harmonious and self-healing. I am quite paralyzed by this because I can never build a business that ultimately makes the world a worse place and promotes ignorance just so I can make some money and I am certain that most businesses do precisely that anyway. What am I missing here? Is there really nothing important to be done aside from the spiritual journey? Is entrepreneurship a delusion?

Hello, Can someone recommend me high quality authentic feng shui resources/books (preferably not that modern "fast-off-the-shelves" commercial stuff). I am building a new house and I want to investigate feng shui before I finalize the building plan. Thanks.

After doing spiritual and actualization work for years as well as thinking about systems and wholeness plus withdrawing myself from the madness of crowds, I naturally started to include much more than my own body and my own needs within my awareness. Somehow I started to care about second and third order consequences. As an entrepreneur I started to care about adding value rather than simply generating profits through sophisticated fraud (most businesses when analyzed from a holistic point of view don't actually add any value and are therefore fraud). It's not necessarily a rational choice that I made, it feels more like I removed the barriers that my ego had created to keep me from caring. I feel like I have just been following some sort of internal compass to arrive here but I could never explain why. Sure I could give some rational reasons as to how a fraudulent civilization will inevitably collapse by depleting all of its initial value but those sorts of arguments where never the real reason why people did what they did. After all evil psychopathic CEOs are quite aware of the fact that pollution is bad for the Earth, they just don't care. Maybe it's because they believe that they will die before they see consequences or maybe they don't care for no reason at all. But the thing is I do care, I do care about reducing suffering, increasing health and beauty, exploring and building new things and I just can't say why. So when I am talking to other people and they ask me something like "Why should I care?" I can never really give a good reason. It's almost as if they are asking the wrong question since caring doesn't seem to be a matter of choice, just like love. To be honest I've always felt different even as a very young person who never knew anything about the world and its philosophies. Even at an early age I was wondering about things like "What is this I feeling that I experience, why can't anyone tell me?" or "Why are people lying to themselves all the time?". I've been searching for something all these years and it almost feels like I was born with this. I guess I always had this unquenchable thirst to understand the most basic question "what the heck is going on?". And no one around me seemed to care, they were all preoccupied with their petty squabbles and corporate quests and of course the social checklists, but somehow I saw through all this very early and then I started asking tough questions. And initially there were no answers so I started taking drugs to dull the pain, but eventually and after excruciating amount of inquiry (honestly, why does it have to be so hard?) some answers started to come. And I guess somewhere amidst those insights I just started to care and I don't think it's a belief because it's just a feeling. I can never go back to being selfish, I've even tried starting businesses that don't add any value and I couldn't do the work, I feel this crushing resistance to doing anything that doesn't actually add value. On the other hand when I am doing something that seems be beneficial to humankind I can work 100 hours week without any need for watching motivational videos and I am excited like a little kid to work on these systems. Can anyone tell me what the heck is happening with me?

I have overall dry skin on my face, scalp and my back. I would like to fix this from the inside without relying on cremes etc. What could be the root cause of this? I am already taking, magnesium citrate, vitamin C, vitamin K2. I am not using any harsh shampoos or excessively hot water.

No soap. According to my research 1-1.5l per day is optimal for kidney health, too much water and kidneys are pumping and working needlessly.

Personally I feel like everyone is actually seeking to return to Source and looking for Source in the dream. I think everyone needs enlightenment, but that's beside the scope of that discussion. Regardless, if people are buying enlightenment stuff from Leo, then maybe they need it, don't underestimate Maslow's insights and people's attraction to truth.

Climate is moderate. I stay hydrated - I make my own electrolyte drink in the morning with lemon, salt, potassium and magnesium and drink about 1.5 l water/day + eat plenty of veggies etc. I know topical solutions can work but a) I feel this is masking the problem, b) I don't want to have to coat myself with oils every day. I looked up the "no poo" method - scrubbing your head with ACV and Baking soda like a crazy person for 30 mins, no thanks. Honestly most of the times I don't need to use anything at all just hot water, I use shampoo like once every two weeks. For some reason my hair is fine and doesn't get too oily.

How would creating something that no one needs help you survive?

Not sure it's as simple as that. Some people want heroin, do you simply give it to them? Value needs to be grounded in a realization of what's good (authentic happiness) and what's a simulation of authentic happiness (heroin). Otherwise there's no progress.

Definitely look it up - this is the solution. You will find out that letting go is neither suppressing, repressing or expressing. It's simply allowing them to unfold without resistance. You are like a pressure cooker, you simply remove the lid and allow the pressure to be released. It's a good book.

This is precisely why Jed's advice on basing everything on the idea of truth is shit. You made up this word now you are trying to prove it. What's more insane than this? Realize that words are just noises you are making and if something is not in your experience then this word doesn't point to anything other than some belief or literally to confusion when there's neither belief nor experience. Drop the fucking words and realize that the conceptual world is a parallel reality of your own making there's nothing to be found there. We only create words to describe and communicate our experiences. If your logic is grounded in assumptions you will only arrive at assumptions. Drop the ideas and start re-building from direct experience. Then there's certainty. Don't ask "How do I know this isn't a simulation". Realize that you made the whole stuff about Math in order to try to explain your direct experience and then you used math to generate a more elaborate complexity and called it a simulation. There's no wisdom there you are only weaving a spider's web by creating new fantasies and trying to make sure reality matches them. It's the other way around! Make sure the words match reality !

Not sure what a 'sin' actually is, but I think it's mostly a religious idea that claims that if you do that you will go to some type of hell. If a religion defines something as sin and you believe that religion you are not supposed to question the dogma. If you are free from religion and you are simply doing an honest inquiry regardless what is wrong and what is right I would say that 'wrong' is what pulls you back towards the dark jungle and 'right' is what pulls you towards the peak of the mountain. So from that perspective it's about whether your action make you more unconscious and more of an animal or more conscious and more of a divine being. Walter Russell thought that casual sex can be extremely detrimental for your vibration and he even claimed that casual sex is what causes civilizations to fall. He thought that when incompatible people mate for selfish reasons the end result is that both of their consciousness go to a lower animal-like vibration and as a result their behaviors start regressing towards those of lower beings. Personally I think it's mostly a waste of time and life to think of sex as something that should be done quickly in some toilet somewhere. Sex is unity, the transcendence of duality. I understand that sometimes people just want to fuck or get fucked, but I think we should learn to manage this energy more wisely and not let it turn into a mindless compulsion. What happens when someone starts eating the same way (willing to eat any junk food as long as it brings some pleasure) or when they don't value their time and start watching stupid TV shows as long as they get some distraction. They get fat, depressed, unfulfilled, unsuccessful and unactualized. I think random sex with random people may have similar detrimental consequences.

Personally I feel ego is a byproduct of identification with some aspect of maya. If you identify with your country you get the patriot ego, if you identify with your religion you get the religion ego, if you identify with the universe you get the oneness ego. Not sure if you can have more than one identities but if you can maybe you could have multiple egos? G.I. Gurdjieff said that we hundreds of tiny disintegrated selves who are in constant conflict with each other.

That is a logical fallacy. If the criminal wins he won't add the remainder of the family's lives towards his life therefore it cannot be said that there exists a competition for the remainder of the family's lives. For competition to exist the context of all participants needs to be aligned. Otherwise it's simply an interaction. Needing competition to improve your health suggests some sort of mental health issue in my opinion i.e. you have no intrinsic motivation to be healthy and require an extrinsic one. Once the external stimulus is gone so is the motivation for remaining healthy and one returns to their old lifestyle. It is well known that Biggest Loser participants almost always gain all of their weight back at some point after the show is over. I will admit that this one is a trickier one to disentangle because in the short-term it creates a simulacrum of value which can obscure the underlying problem. This is similar to thinking that anti-depressants are curative because they mask the problem. As for the summer camp stuff I will say this - It is obvious that competing with someone else will make you better at what you are currently doing, however this often comes at the tragic price of ignoring your signature strengths and unique aspirations in order to excel at the sameness game. When a bunch of companies decide to compete for selling aspirin eventually aspirin will become cheaper and easier to produce, however both society and companies would have benefited significantly more if instead of competing in the aspirin game some of those companies went on their own path and developed drugs for diseases that didn't exist before. Do you prefer to have $0.50 aspirin and only aspirin or do you prefer to have $10 aspirin and cures for various cancers and autoimmune and genetic disorders? So when assessing the value of competition you need to take into account not only what was created as a result of it, but also what wasn't created. If you could choose between creating something 'okay' and something 'great' and you chose the 'okay' thing you will be actually at a loss. In economics this is called opportunity cost. Personally I have nothing against embracing competition if someone would provide convincing arguments in favor of it, however I haven't seen any of those yet. As far as I can see it's simply legacy code left over from our ape ancestors. Fun fact - one of the meanings of the word ape also means 'to copy' / 'to imitate'.

I never even mentioned the term enlightenment in the post, let alone commented on how it relates to truth-realization. This comment is one big straw man from beginning to end. Guys, come on. Learn some basic logic.

You seem to be using the word 'compete' as to mean any form of confrontation regardless of context or goal. That is not the case. Competition refers to a situation when multiple participants are striving for the same prize. In the case of the criminal and the family both participants have a different context and a different goal. Based on the information you have provided it is unclear what the criminal wants and certainly you and your family aren't playing his game at all. In this case you are simply defending yourself. To compete with the criminal would imply that if you win you will get some prize that both of you want and both of you didn't have prior to the encounter. Keeping your life or your money isn't a prize because you already had both before the beginning of the game. The only thing I see is an empty statement without any examples or arguments to back it up. Competition is probably the best choice for animals and very primitive humans since they are incapable of creating value. However, relative to what a person's true potential is, competition is never optimal and therefore I can't judge it as healthy behavior. That would be like saying that raping can be sometimes healthy because it could result in procreation.

Instead of relying on ad hominem attacks simply state how I am wrong and why.

The idea that there's a best man is rooted in the ignorant belief that people are qualitatively the same and therefore they need to create quantitative differences in order to take resources from one another. Whether you steal them by force or create environments whether everyone is seeking the same prize is of little significance, both are zero-sum games and as such are incompatible with health or harmony. Competition demands that one needs to suffer in order for another to win. It's simply ignorance regardless of your SD stage. As for your example with the criminal in a dark alley, that is not competition for you are not seeking the same prize, that is simply defending yourself against a desperate or insane person. Competition would be to try and see which insane person is going to steal more wallets or rape more women or something like this.

There's no need for agreement in competition. There's nothing exploitative in the example I provided either. If you are trying to obtain something from the past you are competing. If you are creating authentically you are actualized. When parties fight for the same prize there's no creation, the prize is already created by someone else, there's no vision, there's war. Here's what the term competition means: competition (n.) c. 1600, "action of seeking or endeavoring to gain what another is endeavoring to gain at the same time," from Late Latin competitionem (nominative competitio) "rivalry," in classical Latin "agreement," noun of action from past participle stem of competere (see compete). Meaning "a contest for something, a trial of skill as a test of superiority or fitness" is from 1610s. Sense of "rivalry in the marketplace" attested from 1793; that of "entity or entities with which one competes" is from 1961, especially in business. Originality and competition are mutually exclusive by definition.

If you are completely new to spirituality he might offer some beginner's insights. However he seems to be stuck at some neo-advaitan nihilism belief in no-self that he tries to extrapolate as an explanation of everything. The main takeaway from Jed's work is that beliefs obscure reality. This is huge. However his conclusions about the ultimate nature of reality aren't very useful. For some reason he didn't want to go further. Additionally I didn't like his spiritual method which starts with the assumption that there is something true and that true is what is and that you can use some reductionistic approach to figure out what's real as if absolute truth is somehow a logical conclusion. Real spirituality is grounded in direct experience not in concepts. For the sentient being spirituality starts in sentient dual reality. There's no indication that there's anything true in regards to relative so-called reality, why would you filter your direct experience through a believe that sentient reality is true?

Thinking about this in terms of static quantities prevents you from seeing the obvious truth that tigers don't compete with plants for soil minerals. Competition arises out of lack of differentiation not out of supposedly limited resources. Relative reality isn't static, it's dynamic, so competing for resources is grounded in not understanding transformation. Instead of trying to be a plant because you saw a plant, be yourself and use what you need to give your gift.

competition (n.) c. 1600, "action of seeking or endeavoring to gain what another is endeavoring to gain at the same time," from Late Latin competitionem (nominative competitio) "rivalry," in classical Latin "agreement," noun of action from past participle stem of competere (see compete). Meaning "a contest for something, a trial of skill as a test of superiority or fitness" is from 1610s. Sense of "rivalry in the marketplace" attested from 1793; that of "entity or entities with which one competes" is from 1961, especially in business. Competition is competition. In every professional sport there's a winner and a loser. The very reason professional athletes are practicing is so that they can win over the other team and take the prize. If you are an amateur throwing hoops in your backyard and there's no prize then there's no competition, you are just playing for fun. But that's not a sport either. Take away the prize and see how many people will be left to practice.

Competition occurs when someone creative figures out how to solve a problem, figures out a business model around that solution, starts offering it and becoming profitable and then a bunch of idiots see that there's proof of concept and try to get in on the game as well by copying what that creative person is doing. In competitive markets the value pie doesn't increase because all the players are doing the same and are always behind the leader because they are not sure what the trajectory is. Since customers can't differentiate between all the different suppliers, suppliers start offering lower prices in order to stand out. As a result all the profits get competed away, the market becomes commoditized and eventually the market gets consolidated by the one who was innovating on cost and augmented product. Case in point, in 2012 all American airlines combined had a cumulative profit margin of 0.2%. There can be no self-actualized competition for people are inherently different and have different visions and purposes therefore it makes no sense for them do be doing the same things. Essentially competition is rooted in deep misunderstanding of the difference between value and money and in lack of self-actualization. Competition is war. Competition is for apes. I have yet to see conscious wars or conscious apes anywhere. Zero-sum games are never conscious. Here's a story to outline how silly competition is. There are two characters in this story. The self-actualized artist "Michael the Artist" and the non-actualized competitor "John the Loser". Now imagine that Michael just finished painting a beautiful painting and placed it in his gallery. His fans loved the painting and it became a success. Our friend John then sees that this painting is being received positively and thinks - Hmm, no one has seen this painting in my own city yet so I will just copy it or make a similar one and will show it in my gallery in order to reap some of the leftover fame for myself too. This is what competition is. P.S. In Leo's life purpose course there's a video titled ' Creator vs Competitor ' which also talks about this.

Competition always means the same thing - a zero-sum game where the goal is to take something away from someone else. Competition is what you do when you don't know how to create value. It's a remnant of the animal kingdom. Apes didn't know how to be creative so they had to compete for what nature created for them. Among people competition is an indication of lack of self-actualization and a sleeping creative mind. You are either using your own mind to define what the prize is or you are competing for obvious prizes created by other people. It's like asking 'what would a healthy war look like?'. If you are not creative you can't transform things you can only try to take what something else already transformed. When you wake up to the fact the world is dynamic not static and to the fact you can transform competition will seem silly. In a self-actualized world competition will be relegated back to its rightful place in the Paleontology museums.