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I've read your replies, and I appreciate the different perspectives. However, I'd like to continue developing another criticism of the spiritual teachings I've been examining, particularly those concerning suffering, reincarnation, pre-birth planning and the supposed necessity of spiritual lessons. Something I've increasingly struggled with is the assumption, repeated by several spiritual teachers and some Near-Death Experience accounts, that human existence is fundamentally an educational curriculum. The general narrative seems to be that souls choose their circumstances before birth, deliberately select difficult experiences and relationships, and enter physical existence to learn particular lessons. Suffering, trauma, disability, addiction, abandonment, poverty and bereavement are sometimes interpreted as opportunities for spiritual development. Some accounts even suggest that suicide doesn't allow someone to escape these lessons, but instead results in another incarnation in which similar challenges must eventually be overcome. Robert Schwartz and other proponents of pre-birth planning seem to draw upon this general framework. Other accounts describe reincarnation as an accelerated way of completing spiritual lessons, while remaining in the spirit realm supposedly allows the same development to occur more gradually. But why? If the spirit realm is supposedly an environment of unconditional love, expanded consciousness, peace and greater understanding, why would spiritual development be slower there? Why would entering a limited physical body, forgetting one's previous existence, experiencing illness, financial insecurity, psychological trauma and potentially horrific circumstances be a more efficient educational arrangement? It seems almost backwards. If consciousness already has greater clarity and understanding outside physical existence, why would it need to repeatedly enter a condition of limitation to acquire something it could presumably understand without suffering? And if God is infinite, omniscient, complete and unconditional love, what exactly does God need to learn? Why would an eternally existing divine consciousness need to educate itself about compassion by experiencing abuse, or learn about love by experiencing abandonment? Why would it need to become temporarily ignorant, vulnerable and limited in order to rediscover qualities that are supposedly already inherent in its nature? I can understand the idea of voluntarily exploring a challenging experience. For example, consciousness might choose to experience creating music within a particular historical period, learning an instrument, developing new technologies or exploring a reality with physical limitations and finite resources. There could be genuine creativity, discovery, experimentation and adventure in that. But this is very different from suggesting that suffering is necessary for spiritual development. Why would someone need to experience sexual abuse, rape, homelessness, disability, torture, addiction or the suicide of a family member to learn something about compassion? Why couldn't consciousness explore, create, develop relationships and experience novelty without requiring those things? I've experienced homelessness and housing instability multiple times. I've experienced abuse and displacement. Yet these experiences haven't somehow educated me into a condition where I can no longer encounter difficult circumstances. I can move into another home and still encounter mistreatment. What exactly was the necessary lesson? How many times does someone need to experience homelessness before the curriculum is considered complete? Sometimes suffering doesn't produce wisdom. Sometimes it produces further suffering. I also question the idea of pre-birth soul contracts. If someone supposedly chooses to experience abuse or trauma before birth, but then enters physical existence without remembering that agreement, what does that agreement actually mean for the person who has to experience it? And how can we establish that such an agreement ever existed? Some NDE accounts describe people supposedly discovering that they chose their difficult lives, or that they and their abusers arranged to exchange roles for spiritual development. I find these interpretations particularly difficult to accept. I don't necessarily dispute that someone might have had an extraordinary experience during an NDE. But I question whether their interpretation of that experience is necessarily an accurate description of objective reality. Perhaps people interpret unusual experiences through their existing religious, philosophical and cultural frameworks. Someone who already believes in karma, reincarnation, soul families and pre-birth planning might interpret an experience through those concepts. There is another possibility worth considering: human beings spend much of their lives inside educational and bureaucratic institutions. School, university, employment, examinations, qualifications, performance assessments, progression and continual self-improvement dominate much of human existence. Could some of our expectations about an afterlife simply reflect the conceptual frameworks we've become accustomed to during physical life? Why do so many spiritual descriptions of the afterlife resemble another educational institution, complete with lessons, assessments, spiritual advancement, guides, contracts and compulsory progression? Why should existence itself be organised like a school that nobody is allowed to graduate from? I find myself much more attracted to an alternative conception of divine existence. Suppose God is already complete. Suppose consciousness doesn't need to learn how to become loving, compassionate or whole because those qualities are already inherent in its nature. Creation could then be an expression of abundance, creativity and exploration rather than a response to some deficiency that needs correcting. There could be countless forms of existence, different environments, different experiences and different expressions of individuality. There could be physicality, adventure, romance, humour, exploration, creativity, novelty and pleasure without making suffering, death, disease, abuse and compulsory reincarnation necessary components. A challenging experience could be voluntarily explored without requiring trauma. Difficulty could exist without cruelty. Individuality could exist without requiring someone to lose their identity or merge into an impersonal state of consciousness. This brings me to an interesting contrast with the teachings attributed to Jesus. Jesus doesn't appear in the Gospels to present existence as a compulsory reincarnation curriculum. His teachings repeatedly emphasise God's mercy, forgiveness, compassion and the availability of the Kingdom of God. Consider the parable of the prodigal son. The father welcomes his returning son rather than demanding that he complete another series of lessons before being accepted. Consider the thief crucified alongside Jesus. In Luke's Gospel, Jesus promises him that he will be with him in paradise. There is no requirement to complete another lifetime, repay a karmic debt or demonstrate that he has reached a particular consciousness level. Jesus also repeatedly challenges religious authorities when he believes they have prioritised legalistic observance over mercy and compassion. His statement, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice," is particularly relevant here. I'm not suggesting that Christianity has no teachings about judgement, repentance or eternal destiny, nor that Jesus explicitly outlined every aspect of the alternative metaphysical model I'm proposing. But the emphasis on divine mercy seems quite different from the idea that souls must repeatedly return to physical existence until they have completed their spiritual education. The distinction I'm interested in is this: What if divine love isn't something that has to be earned through suffering? What if compassion doesn't need to be learned through cruelty? What if someone doesn't need to experience abandonment to understand love, or abuse to understand kindness? What if divine mercy is already available rather than something granted after completing an enormous spiritual curriculum? And what if death doesn't automatically mean another assignment, another examination or another incarnation? I particularly struggle with the suggestion that someone who dies by suicide must return to experience similar challenges again. I don't see how that can simply be presented as an expression of unconditional love. It seems to introduce an enormous amount of speculation about the afterlife while potentially making an already painful human experience sound like a spiritual failure. I find the idea that a spirit must now return to repeat difficult experiences deeply troubling. There is no reliable evidence that this happens, and I don't see why I should accept that interpretation simply because certain spiritual teachers confidently describe it. I'd much rather consider the possibility that consciousness can be welcomed into peace, love and freedom without being subjected to another compulsory physical existence. Ultimately, I keep returning to one question: If God is infinite, complete and unconditional love, why would suffering be a prerequisite for experiencing existence? Why must the universe be a spiritual classroom rather than an expression of creativity, freedom, exploration and love? Perhaps spiritual development can be voluntarily explored, but it doesn't follow that it must be compulsory. Perhaps existence doesn't need to be an examination. Perhaps we don't need to become worthy of returning to God because we were never separate from divine love in the first place. I don't claim to know precisely what happens after death, or that my alternative is an established description of reality. But I do think the spiritual curriculum model deserves considerably more scrutiny than it generally receives. I'm not convinced that suffering is a necessary educational tool of an infinitely loving God. And I'm certainly not convinced that compulsory reincarnation is the only, or even the most compassionate, way to understand existence.

@Leo Gura I think that you are biased against the benefits of having/using a Guru/ Bhakti Yoga because of your bias for independence. I know, understand and respect that you want to be independent in your search for truth, at the same time I think that you have missed out on something very powerful and real, because of your bias against " depending on another human", for reaching truth. I belive you are yet to discover that a guru is an energy form that you can connect to and USE to reach higher states of concioussness than psychedelics and that the guru, in actuallity is something that is impersonal and a tool for our spiritual evolution. Let me know what you think🙏🏻

CoPilot wrote also it's article to complete mine: # On Why Great Civilizations Eventually Discover the Same Shape @Ziran, One thing that strikes me whenever I compare traditions is that the deepest similarities usually do not appear in theology. They appear in structure. Theologies disagree. Structures converge. A Chinese scholar speaking of Heaven, a Jewish rabbi speaking of covenant, a Greek philosopher speaking of virtue, a Buddhist monk speaking of the Middle Way, and a medieval Christian speaking of humility may not agree about metaphysics at all. Yet remarkably often they arrive at the same civilizational conclusion: > Stability exists between extremes, not at them. This is historically important because civilizations are not usually destroyed by weakness alone. Just as often, they are destroyed by their successes. The Roman Republic became an Empire. The strongest empires become bureaucracies. Victorious religions become institutions. Revolutions become governments. Strength contains the seed of rigidity. The *I Ching* understood this thousands of years ago. The text is not fundamentally a book about fortune-telling. It is a book about transformation. Every victorious condition contains conditions of decline. Every collapse contains conditions of renewal. Not because morality demands it. Because systems behave that way. ## Why Heaven Matters More Than God One of the most fascinating differences between Chinese and Near Eastern civilization is language itself. Ancient Hebrew frequently asks: > Who commands? Classical Chinese often asks: > What is the pattern? This is why "Heaven" became such a powerful idea. Heaven is simultaneously personal enough to inspire reverence and impersonal enough to describe natural law. A farmer can understand Heaven. An emperor can understand Heaven. A philosopher can understand Heaven. The concept survives because it connects moral and physical reality without entirely reducing one to the other. Modern people often assume this is primitive. I increasingly suspect it is sophisticated. A civilization survives longer when it focuses less on explaining ultimate reality and more on aligning with observable reality. ## The Forgotten Role of Boundaries There is another pattern visible across history. The intellectual centers of civilizations create systems. The borders create synthesis. The Silk Road did this. The Black Sea region did this. The Mediterranean did this. The frontier is where religions meet, languages mix, trade occurs, and myths borrow from each other. Pure cultures exist mostly in books. Real cultures are usually mixtures. Christianity itself absorbed Jewish, Greek, Roman, and local European influences. Buddhism changed shape as it moved from India to China and then Japan. Islam absorbed Persian, Arab, Central Asian, and countless local traditions. The strongest civilizations are often not the purest. They are the most adaptable. ## Why Symbols Repeat Another fascinating question is why certain symbols seem to appear repeatedly. Four directions. Four seasons. The cross. The square. The mandala. The wheel. There is probably no single explanation. Partly psychology. Partly mathematics. Partly simple interaction with the physical world. Human beings live on a roughly spherical planet yet navigate locally through horizons, producing directional thinking. We experience cyclic seasons. We divide space. We orient ourselves. The striking fact is not that religions use symbols. The striking fact is that very different civilizations often discover similar symbolic geometries independently. Perhaps symbols survive for the same reason technologies survive: they work. ## The Problem With Perfection Every civilization also encounters the same paradox. People desire perfection. Reality produces growth. These are not identical things. A perfect crystal does not evolve. A perfect doctrine does not adapt. A perfect organism cannot learn. A perfect society cannot tolerate surprise. Life appears to require a strange mixture of order and incompleteness. Too much chaos destroys structure. Too much structure destroys adaptation. Successful cultures somehow maintain both simultaneously. The Chinese described this through Yin and Yang. Greek philosophy described it through balance. Many Jewish thinkers described it through continual interpretation rather than final closure. Modern science describes it through dynamic systems operating near equilibrium without becoming frozen. Different languages. Same shape. ## The Myriad Creatures The phrase "myriad creatures" from the *I Ching* is important because it shifts attention away from abstract perfection and toward manifestation. The text does not celebrate uniformity. It celebrates emergence. Heaven and Earth interact. Then come the myriad creatures. The interesting thing is not unity alone. The interesting thing is what unity produces. A healthy civilization should probably be judged by the same criterion. Not whether everyone thinks alike. Not whether every contradiction disappears. Not whether every question is answered. But whether the system continues generating life, creativity, responsibility, and meaning. The forest is not successful because every tree is identical. The forest is successful because it keeps producing trees. Perhaps that is why so many traditions, despite their disagreements, continue returning to the same insight: > Ultimate reality may be one. > > Human reality is many. > > Wisdom is learning how the one becomes the many without forgetting either.

I became directly conscious of one aspect of God. I had the realization before that God is peace, which I have talked about earlier, but yesterday I experienced directly another facet of God. It is something that can be described by many names: absolute existence, ultimate power, ultimate magnificence, ultimate glory, and might. All of these aspects became directly clear in my mind recently, not merely as philosophical concepts or ideas that I had intellectually understood, but as something I had directly experienced and glimpsed for myself. Previously, I had glimpsed the peace of God through meditation. it was a glimpse of a profound peace that seemed to transcend the usual fluctuations of the mind and the changing circumstances of life. Through meditation I recognized that peace is not merely something the mind experiences under favorable conditions like chilling on the beach drinking grape juice…but rather it is something much more fundamental to reality itself. It is literally inside my being . Like literally inside my physical body .I had come to understand God as peace through this experience, although I knew that my understanding was still incomplete. Yesterday, however, I experienced something different through a “religious experience “I glimpsed another dimension of the divine. I experienced ecstasy, glory, absoluteness, magnificence, and overwhelming power. It was as though another aspect of God had become directly apparent to my consciousness. Whereas my previous glimpse had been primarily associated with peace, this experience revealed something that could be described as the absolute greatness and majesty of existence itself. And this has a terrifying flavor to it rather than peaceful or quiet. It is also GOOD. It is so good that it is terrifying. It is so good You want to run away from it because of how good it is lol . These two experiences have made me realize that God cannot be reduced to a single attribute or description. We may call God peace, but peace might be only one aspect of the divine reality. We may also speak of God as absolute existence, infinite power, ultimate glory, magnificence, or the very ground of being. And actually god is all names . But some of them hit closer . The important distinction for me is that I am no longer considering these ideas exclusively at the level of intellectual understanding. I have had glimpses of what I interpret as different aspects of God through direct experience. Although these glimpses were brief and my understanding remains incomplete, they have had a profound effect on my conviction regarding the existence of God. I am beginning to understand that there is a significant difference between believing in God because of philosophical reasoning and knowing God through direct experience. This brings me to the question of atheism and the limits of philosophical arguments for the existence of God. I do not think that atheists can be convinced of the existence of God by philosophical arguments alone, such as the intelligent design argument, the fine tuning argument, or the ontological argument. These arguments do provide rational grounds for believing in God, and I believe they point toward the existence of a divine reality. However, philosophical arguments and direct experience operate at different levels. An argument can lead someone to consider the possibility that God exists, but it cannot necessarily produce the direct realization of God in that person’s consciousness. Someone can study arguments for God’s existence, understand their logical structure, and even acknowledge that they have considerable philosophical force without undergoing any corresponding spiritual transformation. A person may understand the concept of peace without ever experiencing profound inner peace. Similarly, someone may understand the arguments for the existence of God without ever having a direct experience of what they interpret as the divine. When you have glimpsed God directly, however, the question takes on a completely different significance. God is no longer a philosophical proposition to be debated. The question becomes grounded in something that you have personally experienced. I say that I know with 100% certainty that God exists, I am referring to the conviction that arose from these experiences. Before these glimpses, I could think about God, contemplate philosophical arguments, and explore different religious and spiritual traditions. But after experiencing what I interpret as the peace, ecstasy, glory, absoluteness, and magnificence of God, my conviction became much more immediate and personal. I am not claiming that I have completely understood God or that I have attained the highest possible spiritual realization. In fact, I would say the opposite: what I have experienced so far has been only a glimpse. I have touched something that seems profoundly significant, but I have not yet fully understood its nature, its implications . But the threshold I passed is I am no longer approaching the question of God solely through speculation or philosophical argument. I now have personal experiences that I can contemplate, investigate, and attempt to understand more deeply. My task is to refine my understanding, and discover more . The next major challenge for me is to reconcile these experiences of God with Advaita Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta teaches that ultimate reality is Brahman, the nondual absolute, and that the deepest truth of the individual self, the Atman, is not separate from Brahman. The apparent separation between the individual self and ultimate reality or the self of all of existence is ultimately overcomed through The realization of nonduality . It reveals that reality is not fundamentally divided into two independent existences: a separate individual self on one side and an ultimate reality on the other…Yet my experiences have also presented God to me as peace, glory, absolute existence, ultimate power, and magnificence. I want to understand Does the divine appear to consciousness through different aspects, while its ultimate nature remains beyond all descriptions? Can the personal God and the impersonal absolute be understood as different ways of approaching the same ultimate reality? And if so, how precisely does Advaita Vedanta explain this relationship? Above all, I want to understand how these glimpses of God fit into the larger question of existence and consciousness. Is the peace of God inseparable from the glory of God? Is the personal experience of divine magnificence ultimately reconciled with the nondual realization of Brahman? And can the direct experience of God lead to a deeper understanding of the truth that Advaita Vedanta attempts to express? These are the questions I want to pursue from this point onward.

What he calls a "symbolic" society, where psychopathy offers greater reward and less risk than it did in tribal society. Our impersonal society is not conducive for a centralized socialist structure with our society's current level of development.

The bottom line is: civilization wins, and barbarism dies. If you want to survive, get on the side of civilization or die out like a caveman. Civilization does not care about morality or fairness. Civilization is a force that is headed a certain way and will crush anyone who dares to oppose it. Moralizing to a huricane as it comes at you is not going to work. These are impersonal forces of nature.

@Seraphim who said that life is fair or just? That is why I don't agree with most religions as the dogma they have that there is some justice to a person who has done good and been a "good boy", which is just a childish illusion. I think this whole notion of spirit guides, higher self etc. Is mainly a fantasy, if God is everything then a spirit guide wouldn't be God, more like some big alien. So don't think of it in these spiritual terms, don't think about life in a human way. As a human we want justice and fairness, but that is just not the case, life just is and you have no say so if the world will be hit by some other planet and we will all die or not. This whole idea of justice is you being against what life is, life is unfair it is unjust and at the same time it can be fair, it just is. I even feel it is low intelligent to belief that life is fair, because if you look around for even a moment, talk to people for a few days, you will realise that life isn't bad, isn't good, it is just circumstantial, one person can live a great life another can suffer endlessly, but at the end everything just is and exist, like the entirity of what can exist, exists, that is existence and that is God, God is all the evil and all the good, all the murderers and all the saviors. Everything else with spirit guides and higher self are just some aliens at most if not a complete fantasy and are more like a distraction from God and beingness then that they are of much help. To say it is unfair to let people be put through this, makes it sound like it is an option, existence just is, there is no option if it exists or not or all the things that exist in it. Can you change the moon her place towards the other side of the galaxy, because you don't like it? No and neither can God, because things just are, God doesn't have some human personality, it is all of existence, it is very impersonal, I don't think you get how infinitely big God is, it is everything, every galaxy, everything that can ever exist, that is all God and it is all now and here being, existing.

As a spiritual seeker, you may have heard many teachers say that spiritual awakening is the end of the personal self. While such claims have undeniable relative value/validity and can serve as effective pointers towards the realization of Absolute Truth (aka. spiritual awakening), it is important to keep in mind that all such statements regarding the "true nature of reality" (and the recognition thereof) can by definition only ever be relatively true, but never absolutely true. To appreciate why this is the case, it is necessary to understand what the word "Absolute" refers to: The Absolute is the infinite field of reality which includes and gives rise to all possible qualities; every quality that there is (and could be) is a relative aspect of that which is Absolute, meaning that anything that you can name, think of and experience is it - and also, it's not it. As outlined in my little "theory" above, consciousness must constantly oscillate between contrasting qualitative states, for without such oscillation the experience of reality would not be possible. (An experience = a relative quality or set of qualities that "stands out" from the infinite sum total of all qualities and thereby comes into existence). This is why all polarities such as "self/no-self", "personal/impersonal", "limited/unlimited" etc. essentially represent two (relative) sides of the same (absolute) coin, since they can only exist and be experienced in relation and contrast to each other. Where there is no Yin, there can be no Yang... and vice versa. However, once (your) consciousness enters a high-frequency meta-state where all seeming opposites are recognized as equally valid facets and expressions of the same infinite Reality, there is now a sort of simultaneous meta-experience of self and no-self, personal and impersonal, limited and unlimited and all other complementary opposite aspects of the Absolute. So in one sense, all of these relative aspects/perspectives are still "online" and fully available to you; and in another sense, they simply cease to have any meaningful significance since all conceptual definitions are now seen to be nothing but mere arbitrary labels. When the pendulum of consciousness swings so fast that contrasting qualities are being experienced simultaneously (as it were), they essentially merge together and neutralize each other... and what remains is the ineffable Divine that contains and transcends absolutely everything and is impossible to speak of. So while it is true that upon awakening there is no more solid sense of self, there is also no solid sense of no-self once you have truly passed through the proverbial gateless gate. Seemingly conflicting statements such as "I exist as a person" and "I don't exist as a person" are now just as equally meaningful/meaningless to you as all other verbal utterances (aka. relative perspectives); you may still emphasize one aspect over the other in order to make a spiritual, philosophical or ethical point(er), but there will be no more dogged attachment to either side of the all-encompassing Coin. Depersonalisation on the other hand signifies being (often involuntarily) attached to and stuck in a specific relative perspective; it means that there has been a shift from personhood to non-personhood, and now the latter perspective is being mistaken for absolute truth and thereby made into an (egoic) identity. (If it sounds strange and unbelievable to you that it should be possible to construct an identity that is based on the tenet of "I don't exist", then you really don't know just how enduring, clever and creative the egoic mind is... trust me, it can make an identity out of ANYTHING, lol). To be clear: For some people, temporary depersonalization may in fact be a necessary phase or stage of their awakening journey; it may just be the appropriate antidote that will over time cure them from their attachment to "being someone", so none of this is meant to be an indictment that points out some kind of shortcoming or character flaw on your or someone else's part. All I am saying is that it is beneficial to see things for what they are(n't) and that there is no need to overly indulge in and willfully prolong such transitory phases. After all, the point of awakening is not to trade in one attachment-based identity for another, but rather to transcend all identity and fully thrust yourself into the great unknown which is quite literally beyond description. But then again, in case you prefer to foster your depersonalisation and milk it to the very last drop, then by all means... depersonalize away.

Nobody claimed that lacking value means ceasing to exist physically. That is a straw man. Your product analogy also makes value relational: a product can provide no benefit to one consumer while being extremely useful to another. So who is the “consumer” in your assessment of me, what costs and benefits are being measured, and what evidence did you use to calculate that I am a net drain? You know almost nothing about my work, relationships, responsibilities, finances, or the people who depend on me. You repeatedly made personal judgments about my competence, relationships, psychology, social ability, finances, and value as a man. Calling my response “taking it personally” does not make those judgments impersonal or mean that I am taking them personally. If anything, your repeated inability to express points without making assumptions and attacking people is more evident that something is bothering you, not me. Then you have admitted these were not evidence-based assessments. They were provocations intended to make me defend myself and perform competence for you. Whether your tactic successfully provoked me says nothing about whether your original judgment was true. You appointed yourself someone else’s motivational coach without knowing what they have already built, then treated resistance to your unsupported judgment as proof that your intervention was necessary. That is self-sealing. If someone accepts your judgment, you “motivated” them. If they reject it, they are “collapsing into victimhood.” Either reaction allows you to preserve the assumption that you were qualified to judge them in the first place. Also—I challenged you. You accepted and offered the livestream. You have not really challenged me. Nobody asked you to be. The alternatives are not mothering someone or degrading them into self-improvement. You could simply support your claims with evidence and acknowledge what you do not know. That is a false dichotomy. “Breaking even” is not the same as being a net drain, and creating scalable abundance is not the only form of functional benefit. More importantly, you asserted that I am low-value before knowing what I produce or which problems I solve. You are now asking me to supply the evidence you should have possessed before reaching your conclusion. You made the judgment. You bring the case. Frankly, you should be able to articulate a coherent claim and provide the evidence for it before I decide whether this conversation deserves any more of my time.

I get what you mean. I don't know how it feels for him. I think his main message is "you are not the conditioned mind/ego, you are universal consciousness". But he talks about universal consciousness in a very impersonal manner....sooo 🤷‍♂️ I understand what he is saying because that same feeling happened here temporarily, but for me it just felt like a subtle attempt of ego/self identification. That feeling fell away quickly.

Also, when locking in, i suggest you read the book "the war of art", it talks about resistance, here's an overview of what it talks about: Resistance targets anything important. The more meaningful a goal is to your growth, the more resistance you'll feel trying to pursue it. It's strongest right before you act. Resistance peaks at the moment just before you sit down to work and eases the second you actually begin. It uses fear, not logic. It doesn't argue with you rationally; it works through anxiety, self-doubt, and procrastination. It's impersonal. It's not a judgment on you specifically everyone doing meaningful work faces it, so don't take it personally or as evidence you're not cut out for the work. It recruits disguises. It shows up as distraction, busywork, self-sabotage, relationship drama, sudden "urgent" tasks, perfectionism, or even illness anything that keeps you from the real work. It never goes away. You don't defeat resistance permanently; you just show up and outwork it, day after day. The cure is showing up as a professional, not an amateur. Pressfield's answer is treating your work like a job: consistent hours, discipline, no waiting for inspiration or the "right mood." Resistance is proportional to the stakes. The more resistance you feel toward a particular action, the more likely that action matters for your growth so intensity of resistance is a signal. Showing up as a professional means: You show up every day. Regardless of mood, inspiration, or how you feel professionals work on a schedule, not on impulse. You show up no matter what. Sick, tired, uninspired you still put in the time. You stay on the job all day. Full commitment during work hours, not just token effort. You commit for the long haul. Professionals think in terms of years and careers, not single projects or bursts of motivation. The stakes are high and real for you. You treat the work as if your livelihood depends on it, because in some sense it does. You are not seduced by applause. You don't work for praise, and you don't collapse under criticism either you stay steady through both. You endure adversity. Setbacks, rejection, and failure don't knock you off course they're expected, not exceptional. You self-validate. You don't wait for permission, recognition, or external validation to know your work has value. You persist through fear. Professionals feel the same fear and doubt as anyone else they just don't let it stop them. You act in the face of fear. Courage isn't the absence of fear; it's moving forward despite it. You accept no excuses. No blaming circumstances, other people, or bad luck for not doing the work. You play it as it lays. You work with the conditions you actually have, not the ones you wish you had. You master the technique of your craft. Professionals put in the time to actually get skilled, not just inspired. You do not identify with your archetype. You don't over-romanticize being "an artist" you just do the work, without ego wrapped around the identity. You keep it simple, keep it real. You strip away drama and mystique and focus on the plain discipline of doing the work.

Reality doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone or anything. It will manifest some possibility without a care in the world for anyone or anything. This is the harsh reality that we live in, you're not cared for and nurtured. You're just cannon fodder for no purpose or reason. Just some random reality existing for no reason. Existence is a joyless and careless machine that selects some random reality out of infinite possibilities because anything is good for it. Existence is a cruel predator and you are the prey

I don’t think that’s possible to have no sense of self. The sense of self whether it’s impersonal or personal still arises as and through the body. It’s just that I no longer believe there’s a “ someone” who owns these arisings, rather, I understand them to have no author. Neither is there any control of them, they just pop in and out of awareness without any prior warning, unscripted and without restriction or limit.

Not sure what you mean by keeps words in chains ? I think the only thing we disagree upon is the possibility for things to go impersonal 24/7 and to still be able to function, as Jim claims he does. It's kinda pointless debating it though. All I can say is that since I started listening to Jim, I have experienced a rapid unravelling of the sense of a separate self. My memories don't have a sense of me anymore. And the sense of the realness of others is also fading fast. No going back now.

And when you pop that personal solipsistic bubble you'll meet Jim in an impersonal field

@Jirh i ask ai and i came to conclusion that love is personal the person can become toxic but they like you more, respect you more in place of themselves. They can become obsessive and possessive. Where respect is impersonal it won't become toxic and when it gets fucked the worst thing that will happen is the person will not talk to you but still respect you. But its also boring as fuck without love cause it dosent do anything. Maybe they will help you more or something. Without love we all respect eachother but we don't have fun. There isn't the wild aspect of shit flipping on its head and thats where the fun is. Love is crazy but it make us human. It let you get lost in drama that no other animal can do. Having heartbroken is just as powerful as falling in love no animal can do this.

Life is just absolutely being, always here, and never not here.Not actually being anything, except in this conception. But then notice how thoughts arise, arising as both the personal and impersonal. The sense of a separate self arises when there is ownership of the thought “I” but notice the content of the thought is what carries the “I”..that’s the illusion. The illusion is just the one love action dreaming difference where there is none. Labels tell a story, but the story is a fiction constructed of thoughts that arise and fall, so thoughts are nothing of anything significance really, except in this conception, which is the illusory dream of separation.

No. There is a difference betweening doing things consciously vs mechanically. When a human builds a nest, he thinks it is his. This is different from a bird. It is a subtle, conceptual difference, not a material difference. Ego claims things. Animals don't have much ego even though they behave selfishly instictively. There is an important difference between ego and just mechanical survival instinct. Humans do things very personally. That's the difference. Ego makes the impersonal personal. You are saying, "Isn't all of life egoless?" And the answer is clearly No, since humans are full of ego.

Im not speaking in koans. When the sense of seperate self loses all momentum (it never really existed in the first place), all that there is, is whats always already the case, and that can't be an experience. ie impersonal, ie life is happening automatically.

You misunderstood. Functioning still happens. Thoughts and emotions arise. But there is no Jim character in there to claim all of that as his own. ie it's all impersonal happening. Hence no psychological suffering. But of course physical pain can still occur.

According to Jim Newman, for him that sense of separate self disappeared completely, never to return. (It never really existed in the first place.) The way he describes it, is that thoughts and emotions are still happening, but there is no one left to claim them, ie it's all impersonal. So he would still feel physical pain. But no psychological suffering, because there is no one there to claim ownership of thoughts or feelings.

It’s not my problem, if you’re going to believe what others label you as being who you believe you are, and take it very seriously and literally, and personally, then that’s your problem. Not mine. You take yourself way too seriously, that’s why you shut people down, that’s why you hide some of your comments. You must already understand that the totality arises as both the impersonal and the personal and that there’s zero difference between the two, unless you’re stuck in literal zone where you fraudulently believe a concept is your true self.

Commodifying Human Connection I watched a video the other day and I think it really summarized something I have been feeling for a while: For the longest time, I wondered why activities like paint and sip classes, axe throwing, run clubs, pickleball, and the such felt *off* and weirdly hipster/ gentrified to me. I never judged people who partake in these activities nor do I judge the organizers. If anything, I have this degree of respect for them because they are atleast TRYING to do something in this world that is seeming becoming more disconnected and hyperindividualistic (while I'm just currently sitting on my ass writing about this). This video goes into that more in depth but basically, traditional forms of community are crumbling and in its place is coming this commodified version of community. And I think a lot of this commodification is happening because people are trying to implement individualistic solutions for systemic issues. Modern adult life is fragmented and lonely, so activities become packaged substitutes for older forms of community. Instead of things like: neighborhood culture, extended family, religious/community institutions, intergenerational gathering, and stable local friendships, you get ticketed recreational micro-events designed to produce connection quickly and efficiently. There is also an element of hyper optimization that's there where instead of building a sense of familiarity over a course of time with your neighbors by being present in your surroundings and free time, you opt for these quick fixes that you can easily schedule into your Google calendar. There’s also a certain millennial/gen-z urban-professional aesthetic attached to many of these. Like pickleball as approachable athleticism, run clubs as a proxy for wellness + networking + dating, paint-and-sips as curated creativity, and axe throwing as sanitized rebellion. Sometimes what’s irritating is not the activity, but the sense that identity itself is becoming commodified into consumable hobbies. It all feels corporate in a weird way. However, I don't think these forms of community is bad thing because all forms of community have a degree of dysfunction that can be present. Traditional sources of community like churches, neighborhoods, extended family, etc can be subjected to things like toxic conformity, gossip, racism, sexism, homophobia, a sense of obligation without compatibility, and caring too much about what other people think. I'm South Asian and I feel like I have a good sense of how community can look like outside of the hyper individualism of the U.S. and outside of the commodified versions of community. I think that's why I don't romanticize community in the same way as a lot of leftists do in western countries, yet at the same time, I do still see the calls to community as a valid critique to the hyper individualism that comes from late stage capitalism. Like I think what a lot of young lefists and liberals describe as "building community" in the west is really just them trying to build a friend group in adulthood now that they are no longer in a school or college environment. And I think this lack of understanding of what community actually is leads to the over curation of it all, even outside of a commodified setting. Like no, community isn't a group of local leftists in the communist bookstore with baby bangs. That's just your social circle. Community includes your neighbor in his 70s that might have questionable political views but is generally a good person. It includes the mom with 3 kids under 10 who lives above your apartment that is making a lot of noise. It includes the annoying neighborhood watch groups. It includes your coworkers you might not necessarily instantly click with. It includes parents that you don't like but your kid and their kid are still some how friends. It's not just people who are in the same stage of life as you and who share the same opinions/ values with you. Don't get me wrong, I don't think you should allow EVERYONE into your community (i.e. sexual predators, raging neo nazis, or people who would be genuinely harmful to everyone else involved), but it does need to be more expansive than the people who are willing to pay their dues for a run club. I think there is grief I'm experiencing regarding a pre-pandemic world. I don't know what adulthood looked like pre-pandemic but I have a few people a bit older than me who have a recollection of what life after college was like. It just felt like people were outside and social more, like they had a different outlook on what it meant to be a normal person. I remember seeing a post a few months ago on how we see a favor like driving someone to the airport as a *community building thing* now but even 15 years ago, that was just a thing you just did as a part of the norm. And I feel like this pattern of how we inflate the value of pro-social tasks today that we used to see as normal not long ago has exasserbated post pandemic. I remember telling a story about how I showed up to a friend's house extra early for a party to help her set up and calm some nerves. The person who I was sharing this to was telling me how I'm *such* a good friend and that my friend who I had helped won't ever forget what I did to help. But to me, this kind of felt like it was the baseline. Like I helped my friend clean up a little around her apartment, I didn't drive her to the hospital after she got an allergic reaction lol. I think the way that tasks that consisted of you being a normal person a few years ago is being inflated into these community building gestures has to do with how scarce and how much more inconvenient they seem post-pandemic. I know the video above is talking about how community feels monetarily expensive. And I don't think there is something inherently wrong with spending SOME money to go out and live your life. I'm not saying you should beat yourself up regarding the finances of you buying lunch as you're hanging out with a friend. I think of the following quote from Karl Marx: “The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being.” At the same time, I don't think money should be a barrier to entry for socializing. I've had friends over the years who lost their jobs or experienced time without income and I loved having the opportunity to find cheap or low cost things for us to do. I also love having people over and just yapping more than meeting up at restaurants these days. I think part of it is that I want to same money and another part of it is how enshitification is coming for us all. A lot of restaurants are over priced AND mid lol. And I think there is an added layer of intimacy of people coming over to my apartment as opposed to us meeting in public. There is an element of other people becoming more intertwined with my day to day activities as opposed to us having to curate and schedule things out in advance by 6 weeks. And I think the setting also feels much more low stakes and casual. Speaking of casual low stakes interactions, Bengali people have a specific word that refers to such things called "adda." When I think of "adda" I think of your friends randomly coming over to your place, you making them a cup of tea and some snacks and yall just chilling for a couple hours / an unspecified, unstructured amount of time. I also think of these specific chairs that are all over the developing and underdeveloped world: https://20toestravel.wordpress.com/2017/05/21/the-plastic-chair-praise-of-the-underappreciated/ (I ran out of space for attachments so I'm just going to include this link) I think of the evenings in India where a bunch of kids go down to play and you have just some random neighborhood aunties sitting on these plastic chairs and talking shit about people while loosely watching the kids (and reporting them to their parents who live else where in the apartment complex if they are misbehaving). Like you don't need money to socialize. All you need is a plastic chair and a random snack you're willing to share. You don't need to go to a scheduled event. You don't need to deep clean your place and go all Martha Stewart in there. You don't need to spend $25 on a mediocre salad. And you definitely don't need to go into a network event that is just the personified version of Linked In. And I think this degree of curation and commodification becomes an obstacle in the very degree of intimacy that a lot of us crave. The video above goes into this point more regarding the app Partiful for example which started out as an easy way to invite your friends to events but then devolved into annoying, impersonal push notifications that you get from people you barely know. I think of this in the relm of hosting where some people making hosting into this elaborate event with themed decor, a fancy menu etc. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. For some people, that's just their hobby and tbh, I enjoy doing the same thing during the holidays. But I think there is a certain kind of intimacy where rather than going all out, that your friend is allowed to see the dishes piled up in your sink or the pile of laundry in the corner that you have yet to fold and put away. I'm not saying bring your friends into unsanitary conditions, but I am saying that your place doesn't have to look like it's out of Better Homes and Gardens. And I think that's why a lot of new parents have trouble making/ keeping friends. Because rather than just having people over in their chaotic environment as is and allowing them to help with the baby and be incorporated to their day to day life, they feel this pressure to host people, clean up, come up with a menu etc. Or they feel the pressure to scramble for a baby sitter so that they can go out with their friends at a club or expensive restaurant when that isn't really their life style or stage of life anymore. Again, nothing wrong with getting a baby sitter so you can get out of the house and not be attached to the kid, but it's more about the expectation of being hyper scheduled and having to treat socializing as project management. I don’t resent people for creating structured ways to meet in an isolating world. I respect the impulse. But I grieve that so much adult sociality now has to be branded, scheduled, paid for, and curated. I want more room for the ordinary, imperfect, low-stakes forms of togetherness where friendship is not an event we produce, but something that can coexist with daily life.

Stop replying, be still, and quiet. Then you’ll see that both the personal and the impersonal are appearances, images of the imageless. Looking out I see everything, looking in I see nothing is the illusion of duality and the ego. It means that while the external world is vast and full of distraction, looking inward requires observing the "witness" or "watcher," where emptiness is actually the pure, unconditioned state of being. There’s nothing to discuss. Bye for now. R.I.P

It’s certainly confusing . I’m not attached to defending his stance . I’m just stating what I understand from his point of view. By saying there is godliness instead of god he means to deny the personification of god as you saw him explaining in the videos . He is denying the personified man in the clouds . He denies the god of the Bible . He denies the separate creator by saying existence wasn’t created but was always so . And obviously you also agree on that .you Leo of course don’t think of god as a separate entity sitting outside the world and causing creation …that is Simply the notion of god that he was denying . by saying it is godliness instead of god he simply means it’s more like impersonal energy rather than a person or deity.