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  1. The Ascension subgroup of the New age community. Example: People who believe they are starseeds i.e. souls from other planets, they are on a mission on this planet and are waiting for a cosmic shift/ascension/the event/harvest/solar flash that will bring transformation to the humanity and society ( mass arrests, alien introduction, polar shift, secret space program reveal, rainbow body enlightment with superpowers etc.) There are many variations of descriptions to this community.
  2. That's the difficult work, embodying Truth, not just as a philosophy but as our entire way of living. There's a powerful book by Peter Ralston on Leo's Booklist that really explains the difference between enlightenment and transformation, you can't miss it. Basically, even when you have an enlightenment or an awakening, that doesn't change your situations or egoic survival habits, changing ourselves is a different matter but when you can understand the confusion between the two, you can use both to to increase consciousness and to embody those insights rather than splitting them both and not aligning our lives with the Truth. Yo your a cool dude, I seen your videos over the years🔥 stay blessed man
  3. Each core pillar is huge, but I think shame-avoidance might be the biggest. Just to demonstrate how shame-avoidance works, using conspiracy theories as an example: "The Shame-to-Conspiracy Pipeline Conspiracy theories medicate shame through several mechanisms: 1. Transformation into special knowledge - The shame of being "ignorant," "left behind," or "unsuccessful" transforms into being one of the few who "sees the truth." You're not a failure; you're awakened. The shame of exclusion becomes the pride of insight. 2. Externalizing the cause - If you lost your job, your status, your sense of cultural relevance - that's shameful. But if a cabal of elites deliberately destroyed your industry to control you? Now you're a victim of evil forces, not a personal failure. The shame dissolves into righteous anger. 3. Retroactive meaning-making - Past humiliations and failures get recontextualized. That bankruptcy wasn't poor decisions; it was "them" keeping you down. That divorce wasn't personal inadequacy; it was "their" attack on traditional values. Shame transforms into evidence of persecution. 4. Community of the knowing - Shame isolates, but conspiracy theories create instant belonging with fellow "truth-seekers." You go from shamefully alone to proudly connected. Example: Someone whose small business failed during economic changes could face crushing shame - "I'm a failure, I couldn't adapt, I'm worthless." But if they believe globalist elites deliberately destroyed small businesses? The shame evaporates. They're not a failed businessperson; they're a warrior against the New World Order. Admitting error would re-activate shame, which is why counter-evidence is blocked. The conspiracy theory doesn't just distract from shame - it performs psychological alchemy, converting shame's poison into the medicine of purpose, belonging, and specialness." You can almost view conspiratorial thinking, Tucker Carlson, and many other right-wing figureheads as "shame-regulation technology".
  4. I've only taken LSD and psilocybin. And here are the levels of the experiences that I have had. 1• Body sensation, dreamy but not sleepy. 2•Very deep thoughts, reflect on past, parents and forgiveness of those that hurt me, even forgiving mom and dad for anything I cried about as they raised me. Seeing how I never truly loved them, only manipulated them to get something to serve me. Kind of like how you never truly love or care about someone until they're dead and you're watching them in the casket, except that I was able to have this realization while they were alive. 3• Preparing for departure. Getting ready to surrender all expectations and to be humble and open to what is about to happen. 4• Acceptance of death, suffering and pain. Putting the light of consciousness on the dark side of reality. Embracing all of existence, especially the parts that do not serve my ego or survival. 5• Panic, despair and total break from reality and sense of self. Some people scream at this point, I usually tell someone and hold onto their arm for dear life. 6• Then reality sucks you in like a whirlpool or black hole. I become infinite, God. I'm drowning in an ocean of hallucinations, I become cosmic and universal. My entire sense of existence is cracked and then completely shattered. 7 Complete surrender and utter embrace of reality, you see that your existence was the ultimate trip. You know you are God dreaming up all this and lost in its own infinity and creation. I've even seen God as myself, like a little God and a Big God. The little God is me having these insights and realizations and the big God, completely stoned on the floor, crying, laughing and not in control of the self that I thought I was in control of. Completely outside the survival game. Death is only the flip side of life. There is also a rebirth, a complete transformation. Your egoic patterns still come back but you can never be asleep to them again, even if you do get lost and distracted in the dream. You can never be fully asleep now.
  5. Then, discover what everything is - at any level. It's not an ideal; it's simply whatever is already the case, about anything. We can start with our experience as it is, right now. For example, since you mentioned it: What is bias? Also, begin to notice anything within you that is inauthentic - any form of pretense, phoniness, affectation, and so on - and drop it. That act of letting go alone already calls for a transformation of oneself. At the same time, pursue absolute consciousness: What am I? What is another? What is life? Just a few suggestions off the top of my head.
  6. I've been working on the educational project Spiralize a bit, exploring how Spiral Dynamics stages influence our approach to money and investing. It resulted in this new page that maps out investment philosophies from Beige through Coral: spiralize.org/insights/investing The Core Framework: Red: Unconstrained power maximization (pump & dump, predatory behavior) Blue: Constrained maximization within sacred rules (faith-based investing, rigid discipline) Orange: Single-objective optimization (pure profit maximization) Green: Value-driven constraints on profit (ESG screening, ethical filters) Yellow: Multi-objective system optimization (balancing profit, planetary health, social equity) Turquoise: Holistic system transformation (actively changing financial infrastructure) Coral: Paradigm-breaking through market interventions What struck me during development was how quick Claude was to warn against Red's predatory tactics while treating Orange's systemic destruction (climate change, inequality) as "business as usual." I had to tell him explicitly to add the Orange disclaimer. The water we swim in makes Orange's harm less visible despite arguably greater aggregate damage. Educational Focus: This isn't investment advice but a developmental lens on how our values shape capital allocation. The most actionable insight according to Claude seems to be the Green→Yellow transition: moving from black-and-white ethical screening to nuanced systems thinking about leverage points and emergent solutions, while I'm personally mostly interested in integrating stage Turquoise and evolving our systems for planetary well-being. The page includes mathematical optimization frameworks for each stage, showing the evolution from simple constraints to complex multi-objective functions. Also covers the "stage inflation" risk - people identifying with higher stages without having genuinely developed the cognitive complexity. Creating this was nice throwback to my optimization background (I have worked with development of applied mathematical optimization software). Has anyone else noticed how their investment approach shifted as they developed? Or found themselves caught between stages, like wanting Yellow systems thinking but defaulting to Green either/or thinking under pressure? Creating the page reminded me of attempting 'conscious investing' ten years ago. While looking back, it was mainly adopting a stage Green framework, and I quickly however fell into the temptation of just investing in single stocks to maximize profit short term. I welcome feedback on how to improve the page and website in general.
  7. For me, awakening is a radical transformation. Emotional awareness and processing is one of the things that can lead to it. But as I realized, the genuine will to surrender to the transformation of the self is the way I can best describe as the major thing that triggers the awakening, at least from my experience. It is not easy to surrender to radical transformation, to shed the old skin, old identity, behavior, patterns, beliefs, perceptions, like a snake shedding its skin. It requires courage, overcoming the fear of the unknown and allow everything from the old self that needs to die, to die. Even if we are very attached to it. There is backlash from the ego. The skin becomes sticky, tight, it resists the sedding. The transformation. Like an old person who wants to live a little more at the expense of the newborn. This may be a very difficult and painful process, and at the same time very liberating, because the old skin can be very suffocating. Limiting, like spiritual prison. And once done, we reborn. With new skin. Fresh like a newborn. Looking at the world with new and fresh eyes. Alienated from our old identity, unidentified with the past, strangers to it. Until the next transformation.
  8. I use gummies on the weekends to relax, it makes time slow down and a certain sort of disassociation happens, I become lazy, hungry and more focused lol. My research into it tells me the Psychedelics have their time and place in usage, if You rely on them totally for Spiritual Awakening it probably won't work, Leo may be the exception but he has also done lots of Sadhana too to supplement it.. I for sure agree, that one should do the Sadhana first, get to a point of Awareness that already brings about a natural sort of Peace and Knowing, if Your stuck there then maybe use psychedelics to give You a peek over the fence, which basically inspires You in your Sadhana practices, but don't rely on them totally, it will more than likely lead You astray... In the end for real Transformation to happen, You have to make it happen naturally meaning without the use of drugs or anything external other than Spiritual Practices.. Find a Guru or Mentor and practice that works for You, stick with it, know Your intentions and goals then let it work its magic!
  9. I'm clear on the distinction mentioned above. You want to feel validated, but a state is a state; consciousness is prior to the body, as if. The possible side effects awakening may have on you are, well, side effects. They are not the consciousness itself, but rather a function of the depth of realization and how your mind relates to that increased consciousness. This seems to vary on a case-by-case basis. You are already inherently selfless - how about that? Don't confuse healing or transformation with awakening. These are different pursuits.
  10. Can't be otherwise. Knowledge is what speaks. It's expressing itself just like me and you, only in different ways. Theoretical or experiential, it's still knowledge based. The only transformation is transforming from knowledge to knowledge. Tell me something you don't know. Can't be something you're not already. You're not transforming, just being. Transformation is an illusion; knowledge- based illusion at that. How would you know you've been transformed if not for knowledge of some kind.
  11. Psychedelics can open the flood gates of consciousness and mind. My position is this. You must already be doing spiritual work, consciousness work, heavy existential contemplation, already doing advanced nuanced personal development and self actualization. Have a healthy eating habit, already moving towards your life purpose. Know what your values and passions are. Lots of study and theoretical knowledge as a foundation. Deep study of epistemology and a deep thirst for spiritual Transcendence are keys for making the most of your trips. Also understanding beforehand that these trips don't last and to not mistake these for permanent transformation or consciousness. You must know to continue your integration after our journey and to continue doing the daily grind, bringing the transcendental back into the relative. Also you must study self deception and how the ego deludes and conflates these experiences. Basically study Leo Gura, Ramana, Alan Watts really good before you do them and to be aware of mind projecting these people's ideas onto your trip.
  12. An associative telic attractor intentionally relating phenomenological overlaps through functional lenses. A unitive predictive preference evaluator of experiential awareness conditioning creative transformation. A distributive perception animating potential anticipations from growing gestalts forming familiar patterns. Context is powerful, connecting a nebulous Consciousness as Intelligence, Meaning, Intention, Telos... everything Context is like a Conscious Phenomenological Associativity, the Capacity to Intuitively understand Relate Feelings. Context is: Feelings relating intuitive understandings. Intuition understanding relative feelings. Relations feeling understanding relatively. Understanding intuitively feeling relations. Contextuality is the Capacity to Remember and Relate, to Distinguish and Frame in relation to Feeling or Intent.
  13. Let's keep it a buck about Leo, He made many extreme claims that we are all supposed to forget about or something, and now take his logic and rationality very seriously, The pinnacle was the moment he claimed to be able to transform into a physical alien on camera, and that he only needed to find the correct camera. Let's take a moment to analyze this claim and its ramifications: -He was never able to do it -Imagine being able to do it, or at least, not being able to do it but thinking that you are (which is probably the case, which would already qualify him as being psychotic at the time), and actually contemplating putting your transformation on the internet. let's analyze this premise: (We are assuming that any vfx experts watching the video would be able to discern it's authenticity, which would be the case in an actual alien transformation) You release the video online. first, the forum community watches it in horror and disgust, and amazement, realizing they are looking at an actual video of their favorite Youtuber transforming into a real life alien. They share it everywhere around the internet, and it quickly starts to go viral. CNN and other major news networks start to pick it up and it goes insanely viral around the world. VFX experts announce its authenticity. the virality of the video starts to grow and grow and people on the news are talking about it and Leo. Everyone wants to speak to Leo because this is the craziest thing that has ever happened in the history of mankind. People start to look for him in real life and maybe even threaten him. Chaos ensues around the world. I mean, this is literally the scenario that would unfold. Total chaos. And yet he still posted about it, contemplating posting it like it would be some minor happening. Are we supposed to believe a man of his intelligence would not foresee these events? Keep it real with us Leo. Were you having an episode of psychosis at the time? and what happened with the portal that opened in your head, and the realizing of the consciousness field of the earth, and speaking with it? I believe this all happened around the 2nd half of 2022. You suddenly had these esoteric episodes, distinct from your regular Oneness awakening, God realization, metaphysical philosophy. And I mean, like I described, you literally contemplated putting out an alien transformation video like it wouldn't be the craziest thing ever shown on earth. And of course you weren't able to do it, which makes me think you went through some kind of psychosis around that time. Are we supposed to sweep all of this under the rug? You literally never explained any of these episodes any further. Never gave us an apology or nothing. It feels so blatant to talk about transforming into an alien on camera and then just never talk about it and talk about other serious philosophers like they are nothing and don't know anything, while you hold the secrets of the universe that no one else has ever figured out. It honestly feels like some master level trolling which I don't like to claim from you. I hope at least it was some kind of poison pill or something, to test us. If it wasn't, I can only expect suspect psychosis. Thinking you're getting away unscathed with sharing your alien transformation video online is more psychotic than anything Connor Murphy went through. It's a true disconnect with the realities of society and the world. It would be a literal Black Mirror episode and people would go looking and hunting for you. And this is already assuming that a transformation like that is even possible. It's disrespectful to your students to make these absolutely bizarre claims and never follow through on it or take them back. A simple explanation that you had a psychotic break would be plenty. But you never did. It's quite enraging actually.
  14. I thought I might share a long-form essay I wrote on underdetermination - which deals with the epistemology of facts, the enshittification of news media, an autopsy of bullshit, and how to navigate today's chaotic information environment. Whereas most treatments of underdetermination tend to explore the topic from the domain of science, I do so in the context that's more relatable to most people - the media landscape that molds our attitudes and beliefs about the world. The article itself can be found here: https://7provtruths.substack.com/p/facts-dont-speak-for-themselves ______________________________________________________________________________________ Facts Don’t Speak For Themselves Still from 'Network' (1976), directed by Sidney Lumet, © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. Text added by the author. Facts, it turns out, do care about your feelings - not because truth is a matter of preference, but because what counts as a relevant fact is always a matter of context. A context is just a background situation for forming interpretations. Think of how a spoken conversation can carry very different meanings depending on tone, body language, and your relationship to the speaker. Facts work the same way. The relevance of any particular fact isn’t fixed - it varies enormously depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, and where you stand in relation to the world. If this sounds like academic pedantry with no real world stakes, think again. Human communication depends entirely on shared conventions about relevance. Just ask any journalist, whose job description is heavily focused on making judgments about which facts matter. The quality of those judgments help determine whether we get functional information ecosystems or dysfunctional ones. Before we tackle today’s chaotic information environment, and what it reveals about the perspectives we inhabit, let’s start with a best-case scenario - and what we get wrong when looking back at it today. The middle of the 20th century is widely considered a high-watermark of American journalism. These were the decades when reporters took down Joseph McCarthy, cracked the Watergate scandal wide open, and laid bare decades of deception about Vietnam by publishing the Pentagon Papers. There’s a charming but misguided notion that this golden age was defined by newsrooms sticking to a simple principle: ‘just the facts’. If this sounds blissfully uncomplicated compared to today’s algorithmic echo chambers, that’s exactly the point. It never was this straightforward. We only think it so because the interpretive machinery operated so seamlessly that we mistook it for objectivity. Yet the myth persists, and it’s easy to see why. Picture an era before cable news, before social media - where families across the political spectrum gathered around a single television set to receive the day’s news. All of it delivered by a trusted anchor, whose voice carried the weight of national consensus. Hard as it is to imagine amid our current algorithm-driven polarization, there was a brief window of time when mass media served as a unifying force. One where we’d argue about what course to take, but could more or less agree upon what happened. That’s not to say that this was some golden age of civility - just look back to the civil rights struggle to see how vicious those disagreements could be. The key difference is that we were having our culture wars within something resembling the same Reality. In contrast to contemporary infotainment - where fact and opinion are tossed into a blender as a matter of course - it’s easy to grow nostalgic for the journalistic integrity of this bygone era. Of course, quality journalism still exists, if you know where to look for it. But its authoritative role has greatly diminished - collateral damage of changes in how we consume our news. The advent of the 24-hour news cycle was pivotal - when eyeballs equate to revenue, sensationalism wins out over substance. By the 1980s these trends were converging into an early version of our media-driven echo chambers. Today’s social media feeds are in fact just the latest iteration of a decades-long transformation. Cable television and talk radio were the initial catalysts. A ‘greed is good’ ethos provided the rationale. Politically motivated deregulation made it inevitable - specifically: 1) The elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, which necessitated balanced coverage of controversial political topics. 2) Media consolidation, which concentrated ownership in the hands of a handful of major players. 3) The privatization of public airwaves, which drove programming to become advertiser-driven. What you get from this brew is what the author and digital activist Cory Doctorow calls enshittification, where media platforms are hollowed out into a scheme for extracting money from the very people they were built to serve. What began with cable news and talk radio has been supercharged by the digital attention economy. We need look no further than our social media feeds, which are precision engineered, like slot machines, to keep us scrolling and tapping. Against this brave new world of competing realities, a desire to return to ‘just the facts’ is understandable. The trouble is, this romanticized version of journalism’s high watermark gets the story backwards. Through our rose-colored glasses, we remember a time when trusted reporters like Walter Cronkite supposedly delivered just the facts, and let events speak for themselves. News was news and commentary was commentary - or so the story goes. What’s missing from this nostalgic portrait is a recognition that Cronkite and his peers were never delivering just the raw facts. They were instead master curators, whose skill was in deciding which facts were relevant to the public interest - and then arranging those facts into a coherent narrative. The higher journalistic standards of this era weren’t illusory - but they weren’t the result of news reporters serving as neutral arbiters of truth. They instead emerged from skilled professionals who understood themselves to be public servants, tasked with helping citizens make sense of a complex world. It was a role that required rigorous judgment about accuracy, relevance, and fairness, rather than a presumption that these journalistic principles translated into objectivity. The kernel of truth in this idyllic distortion is that a distressing number of people today lack even basic media literacy skills - which is understandable given today’s chaotic information landscape, and decades of educational neglect. What this amounts to is a form of epistemic inequality - where access to reliable information - and the skills (and inclination) to evaluate it critically - become yet another form of privilege. What does this inequality look like in practice? It’s a media environment where quality journalism demands our time, effort, and resources - while misinformation flows freely through social media feeds engineered to exploit our psychological vulnerabilities. The natural outcome of this digital divide is that people gravitate to sources of information that accommodate their reality. And if you’re someone struggling to keep a roof over your head while juggling two jobs with family obligations, you probably don’t have the time or motivation to become a part-time epistemologist. Fair enough - what’s needed isn’t sophisticated theory, but basic bullshit detection. An Autopsy Of Bullshit Bullshit is a term we love to throw around casually, but it’s a concept that’s taken seriously by respected philosophers, who’ve given it a precise definition. So what is bullshit? It’s not the same as lying. A liar at least respects the truth enough to avoid it, but bullshit is speech that’s manufactured without any regard for truth or falsehood. Its main purpose is to deceive and distract in service of an unforthcoming agenda. Whereas a lie might fabricate facts, bullshit separates facts from the contexts that make them meaningful. Its intent is to get you to bow out of the truth game altogether due to apathy and exhaustion. To that end, the bullshit artist will bludgeon you with anything and everything: flattery, half-truths, irrelevant statistics, thought-terminating clichés. Whatever they can get their grubby little mitts on, they’ll use to get you to stop asking questions. While bullshit has been around with us from time immemorial, our fractured media landscape provides today’s bullshit artists with the cover they need to thrive. Inclusivity - the notion that we should accommodate different ideas and perspectives - is a worthy ideal whose very nature makes it self-undermining without proper guardrails. All manner of dangerous bullshit will take advantage of this openness to masquerade as legitimate perspectives - including those that seek to undermine the very tolerance they cynically exploit. This is known within philosophy as an example of a ‘free rider problem’ - where individuals benefit from a collective good without bearing their fair share of the costs. It’s a dynamic that enemies of open societies have gotten very good at exploiting, as evidenced by the fact that modern authoritarians are more likely to gain power through the ballot box than through military coups. There’s a widespread folk-theory of information that makes us especially vulnerable to this kind of exploitation - the so-called ‘marketplace of ideas’ - which holds that truthful viewpoints will ultimately prevail over toxic nonsense. It’s a lovely aspiration that’s unfortunately disconnected from the messy complexity of human psychology, which is wired for survival rather than truth. What Facts Get Wrong The vast majority of our viewpoints aren’t arrived at through careful consideration, but as an organic outgrowth of our lived experience. Precisely because we can step back from these lived orientations but not step outside of them entirely, this necessarily means that our assessments of the world are always localized, limited, and incomplete. Given this reality, the idea that we could somehow critically examine all of our assumptions is absurd. While armchair philosophers may exhort us to ‘question everything’, in reality this isn’t a blueprint for wisdom - it’s a recipe for psychosis. This is what philosophers call the problem of underdetermination - where the available evidence literally under determines which interpretation is correct. It’s not just that we disagree about what facts mean; it’s that we have to go beyond facts themselves to make sense of the world. Which brings us back to our original dilemma. If the relevance of facts is always a matter of what we’re trying to accomplish and where we stand in relation to the world, then what basis do we have to reject harmful or destructive viewpoints? When we remember that facts never speak for themselves but are always curated and arranged, we can be more attentive to the agendas that facts are in service of. While there’s no shortage of bad actors who are at the ready with a firehose of lies, more sophisticated bullshit artists know how to use facts to deceive and manipulate. The so-called 13/50 rule that’s a staple of racist discourse is a telling illustration - where it’s asserted that black Americans make up 13% of the population but make up roughly 50% of the crime statistics. Conveniently missing from this ‘factual’ premise is everything that would prevent someone from drawing the racist conclusions it’s designed to promote: centuries of economic exclusion, forced ghettoization, discriminatory policing practices, engrained prosecutorial bias, and methodological problems with crime statistics. Not to mention the unspoken implication that 40 million people are collectively responsible for the actions of individuals, in a way that white people never are. More prevalent than outright malicious intent are instances where someone is using facts to prop up a flawed premise. Take the argument that systemic racism is overblown or exaggerated, based upon the achievements of a number of high profile black entrepreneurs. Not individuals born with a silver spoon, but those who overcame genuinely harsh circumstances. For someone who lived this reality - working late nights and scraping together every penny to build something meaningful despite real obstacles - these stories vindicate that the system works, and success is simply a matter of talent and effort. What’s often missing from these accounts is an acknowledgment or awareness of the invisible infrastructure that made their success possible: the community program that provided avenues for constructive engagement in a rough neighborhood. The social programs which helped a parent put food on the table. Or simply the luck of avoiding the kind of crisis that destroys someone’s potential before they’ve gotten off the ground. Blind spots that in no way undermine the talent and hard work of these success stories, but do go to show that individual achievement doesn’t automatically translate into special insight about social policy. Where We Go From Here Which brings us back to our earlier question: if facts can be misused by malicious actors and misinterpreted by well-meaning people, how do we separate viewpoints that are worth engaging with from those that we’re better off discarding? A question made all the more complicated by the recognition that no viewpoint captures it all, and we’re always evaluating from within our own vantage point. When we acknowledge that viewpoints exist on a spectrum, we can start to develop some workable heuristics for which perspectives foster constructive engagement in spite of their blind spots, which are seriously hindered by distortive patterns, and which are deliberately manipulative. In general, higher quality perspectives are characterized by their adaptability, contextual awareness, and a realistic appraisal of their own limitations. Lower quality ones can be identified through reliable patterns of Reality-denial, where relevant complexities are ignored or dismissed. And malicious viewpoints weaponize whatever they can get their hands on - facts, emotions, grievances - to feed a selfish, shitty agenda. The key lies not in escaping the limitations of our viewpoints, but in acknowledging their existence - and learning to work within them skillfully.
  15. You’re both right! I’ll stick with my nomination, borrowing from the Cantor and scholastic context of the “infinitum absolutum” versus the “infinitum secundum quid,” and from the great prolegomenon “Apeiron,” and also blast through traditia and sedimentia with this most explosive metaphor, for I am not merely human but, to tie it to Nietzsche, I am dynamite! Be sure to see my videos, where you’ll see how I weave the live currents of contemporary and traditional trends together with Leo Gura’s great contribution. All this is my integration work. It will lead not only to universal ontology (the ontology of absolutely everything, of reality and ultimate reality, etc.), but to a whole new civilizations epoch of “integral science” and an “integral philosophy” that blows past Wilber and even Dible and Gura, for it is INTEGRITY itself! It is a matter of CONFIDENCE both in the sense of the method of hypothesis operative in speculation and theoretical activity AND in the sense of the highest CONFIDENTIAL KNOWLEDGE, hidden in plain “sight,” but in the direct rays, I reflected and unreflectable and unrefractable LIGHT, for it is SIGHT WITHOUT LIGHT, or honestly choose your own metaphor from your infinite imagination and use whatever works to actually effect the great paradigmatic transformation of humanity. Universal humanity is possible in so many ways, but the point is to see it clearly, in lucid God-consciousness, and to see it through. I am happy to share transcendental happiness in any and all ways possible, and personally I have always attached this promise to the very idea of absolute infinity, and precisely to its reciprocal, as a recipe, with the main ingredient being the highest possible magician: me, the supreme personality of the Godhead, the actual fucking God. Leo’s completely right in indicating this, and doing it like nobody else does. It’s a complete miracle that this and all the other possibilities can be here and now, and so much more and and must!
  16. It may not seem logical to you because, as humans, our perspective is limited to a narrow slice of cause-and-effect relationships. We see only fragments of the infinite network of relational structures that interlock and build upon one another. But every form, every state, every transformation is logical within the framework that sustains it. What appears “illogical” is simply logic operating from a structure or perspective we cannot fully grasp. Even phenomena like two subatomic particles being in two places at the same time follow the internal logic of quantum reality. Logic is not a human invention; it is the inevitable coherence of relationships, whatever their scale or expression. Relationship are coherent, because if not they collapse, everything is synchronic without deviation. Even the chaos and destruction are synchrony form a wider perspective
  17. A Strategic Blueprint for European and Global Peace Hello everyone, I'd like to share a strategic framework for the question that was asked by PurpleTree. Traditional geopolitics often traps us in a cycle of managing rivalries and balancing threats. This proposal outlines a different path: a phased, "three-stage rocket" strategy that moves from pragmatic stabilization to a deep, systemic transformation of international relations itself. The vision is to build a world where great power competition becomes obsolete. This strategy integrates practical, near-term actions with the visionary toolkit of the Global Governance Frameworks (GGF), a project I have worked on since around March this year. The GGF is a comprehensive, open-source blueprint for civilizational transformation, an ecosystem of interconnected frameworks designed to provide scalable solutions to our world's crises and guide humanity toward a regenerative future. --- Stage I: Building the Launchpad - Forging Principled Autonomy (Years 1-5) Before Europe can effectively mediate peace, it must become a strong, coherent, and autonomous global actor. This first stage is about building internal resilience to address the core challenge you (PurpleTree) identified: an over-reliance on the US, which 'lives far away but has a lot of control.' By forging principled autonomy, Europe creates the foundation for credible power. Pillar 0: Social & Economic Cohesion: The foundation of all strength is internal unity. This involves implementing pilot programs for universal basic income and services (via the `AUBI framework`) to eliminate economic precarity, while deploying community healing programs (based on the `Kintsugi Protocol`) to build high-trust, resilient societies from the ground up. Pillar 1: Strategic Independence: Europe must achieve sovereignty in key domains. This includes a full transition to renewable energy, securing critical supply chains, and developing an integrated European defense pillar within NATO that can act as a credible deterrent on its own. This directly realizes the vision you mentioned of a 'strong European army... just for defence,' ensuring Europe's security is in its own hands. A central part of this is a clear Roadmap for Peace in Ukraine, using the methodologies of the `Peace & Conflict Resolution Framework` to pursue a just and lasting settlement. The goal aligns with your suggestion for a strong, sovereign Ukraine that acts as a bridge, fully integrated into the EU market and with robust security guarantees. Pillar 2: Economic Gravity: With a stable core, Europe can project influence through attraction rather than force. By scaling up its Global Gateway initiative and establishing a fair and transparent trade architecture, it becomes an indispensable economic partner for the US, China, and a post-conflict Russia. Pillar 3: The Innovation Bridge: This involves launching a "Helsinki-2" process to create new, updated security agreements for the 21st century, covering cyber, space, and AI, a formal venue for the 'open honest serious dialogue' needed to address the legitimate security concerns of all parties, including Russia. It also means creating a Peace and Transformation Index to transparently track progress towards a more stable world, measuring metrics of well-being (like the GGF's `LMCI` (Love, Meaning & Connection Index) alongside traditional security indicators. --- The Bridge Phase: Proving the Model through Regional Piloting (Years 6-10) This phase directly addresses what you correctly identified as the main issue: 'trust and diverging interests'. Having established its own autonomy, Europe begins to build that trust by testing the GGF's transformative models with a 'coalition of the willing,' proving their value through successful cooperation. The centerpiece of this phase is the launch of the first Regenerative Trade Zone (RTZ). Governed by the `Gaian Trade Framework`, this zone pioneers an economic model where trade actively heals ecosystems and builds community wealth, using regenerative currencies like `Hearts` and `Leaves`. By demonstrating the superior stability, resilience, and prosperity of this model with partners in Africa, Asia, or the Americas, Europe creates a powerful "pull factor," making the regenerative economy an attractive, evidence-based alternative to the current extractive system. --- Stage II: The GGF Endgame - Pioneering a New Global Paradigm (Years 11-25) With the GGF model proven in the Bridge Phase, the final stage is to launch a new global system that transcends the logic of great power competition. The core strategy is the "Regenerative Pull," creating a system so inspiring and beneficial that joining it becomes the most rational choice for all major powers. A Global Regenerative Economy: The RTZ is scaled globally, with access to the `Global Commons Fund` providing stability and funding for planet-wide public goods. This offers a path to prosperity for all nations based on healing, not extraction, and represents the 21st-century evolution of the idea to one day 'integrate Russia into EU,' creating a superpower rooted in regenerative economics rather than old political structures. Species-Level Security Cooperation: The `Aegis Protocol` is deployed, inviting the US, China, and Russia to transition their military capabilities into a shared Global Security & Exploration Trust. Their new, unifying mission becomes addressing species-level threats: planetary defense from asteroids, preventing pandemics, and managing existential risks from AI. This final stage doesn't solve the old rivalries; it makes them obsolete by reframing global security as a shared, positive-sum mission for the survival and flourishing of humanity. Conclusion This strategy presents a coherent pathway from the complex realities of today's geopolitical landscape to a genuinely transformed and peaceful future. It begins with pragmatic steps to build strength and stability, then uses that foundation to pilot and scale a new system of global cooperation. By doing so, Europe can lead the way in demonstrating that a more regenerative and collaborative world is not only possible, but is the most realistic path to enduring peace. [Link to the full, detailed strategy synthesis document as a blog post on the GGF website]
  18. I'm saying death doesn't grant you lasting awakening, because you quickly go back to sleep again (granting reincarnation, which we are already granting, because life is you reincarnating moment to moment). I would claim everybody has had small moments of awakening, but they quickly go back to sleep, so it mostly doesn't even register. The profound moments of awakening are those that last a bit longer and that cause a kind of transformation or shift in perspective and an opening to what is possible. The "awakening" at death is similarly only a relatively small one, and it will quickly end. If you want lasting awakening (enlightenment), you have to aim at it, be it before death or after death.
  19. Greetings - good to find this community and be here. Below I would like to discuss and ponder the nature of non-duality and such, take a step a look into a different concept of non duality.... one that while it isn't so popular these days, certainly isn't nothing of novelty.... Lately I keep seeing an increase of posts across various circles, saying how non duality translates into wholeness and therefore "we are already are" and there is nothing to be done but just "be", rings more like passive compliance -perhaps even the quiet wish of those who benefit most from our sleeping this world of 1's and 0s or duality as they call it, the world of extreme opposites, where say say darkness does not exist without light, where you are labeled "this" or "the other", often times in extreme opposites. This constant push for Neo-Advaita non-duality.... largely influenced by the West but I would like to explore a more ancient take on non-duality, one that requires some inner work to get it.... So if this interest you let's dig.... What could non duality possibly mean? For me personally - Home. Easy as that. Bold I know, tho I am allowed to my opinion, one would hope. The place before the illusion, before the separation and while separation is part of the illusion, we must be aware of the existence of separation at least within this world of illusions. Now that doesn't mean we cannot speak about non-duality, remines of our time before "here" and try to make sense of it - but to attempt to practice non duality within the illusion is an oxymoron by default - arguably so, equally to speak about wholeness in a world of separation is conflicting, but yet once again, recognizing or rather remembering these concepts is the stepping stone for home-coming. Advaita, The Plenora, The Tao, The Source as some call it these days. All names to describe the place where our true Self and consciousness truly originated, beyond the illusion of the Ego, as I called it earlier home, where we originated before the split our entrance into this realm, whatever the reason, let's leave that be for now, that by itself is a separate "story". So what does non-duality really mean beyond "Home"? Personally the way I see is simply as follows: it's a place of vastness, wholeness and resonance. A place where the greater good is not measured by opposites but by quite simply observing and understanding the results of an action on the collective. By observing the consequences of an action, we can determine whether it was positive or not - no need for opposites or darkness as a measuring stick. Utopic, madness, wishful-thinking, yeah I know what you are thinking and yet let me show you a simple example how the mind forgets, but the soul *always* remembers. When you were a kid, even before capable of speech, when you hurt another kid, how did that make you feel - awful, wasn't it? You see the soul when it enters this realm before it gets corrupted by obvious darkness of this world remembers its natural essence. The resonance of the higher Self within the soul is still pure before the corruption of the Ego. As we grow older, we "learn better", learn to put on masks, use the Ego to navigate this realm and worse of all, start justifying and accepting the darkness as part of this existence - only natural, it's a coping mechanism afteralll, yet one that can cloud the soul's essence if not recognized. So how can we exist in non-duality, be whole, be in oneness and still be ourselves without losing our identity? Another concept that failed to escape me for the longest time, something that I must recognize made me scared - classic mindgames of the Ego. You want to think as the other side as an infinite treat, an old wise Oak that long before linear time, one that predates all other realities - simulated, illusory or not. Base reality - a place where some say, we can materialize and de-materialize at free will, explore the vast real cosmos as we wish, be incarnated or in ethereal/spirit form. But let's focus on the question at hand, if we think as the oneness an old wise Oak, each branch represents the Self - the Oak has many different and distinct branches, which exists with their own distinct characteristics and colorful features... There is much richness in diversity, wouldn't you say? Equally, what's a tree without its branches? Nothing but a hollow log, I would dare say. This is how I have personally understood the paradox of how to be in oneness without losing the Self (nevermind the Ego, the clouding knock-off version of the Self that only serves to navigate the illusion). How do we even start to remembering the way back "Home"? By embracing your higher Self, understanding this world for the illusory nature that is and ***more importantly, active participation, metanoia*** active transformation in heart and perception, a conscious shift of the mind. Nothing to do with becoming enlightened , a saint, a meditation master, special or dissolving the Ego - Once again nothing but refined and clever distractions, subtle traps designed to keep us asleep within the dream. They distance us from the much simpler, more natural process of beginning to remember who we truly are. I can only tell you what has been working for me, as this process continues to unfold, its got to do with alignment and resonance. Each experience is different, we all wear different masks afterall and have different attachments. But if I could say the main things that have helped me along the way are: - recognizing this world for the illusion, distraction and separation it is. - using my consciousness as an antenna with purpose, actively asking "my higher Self" for answers and not from an Ego perspective, I remember the first time I searched in the stillness "and managed to speak with my consciousness" for lack of a better word - I was encountered with the first paradox: Who is asking? Is the the mask or the one behind it? That pointed me towards the right direction but I struggled to understand initially, for all I had known was the mask for most of my time here on this realm. The mask/ego feels like a loud child, trying to rationalize everything, always protecting itself much like a child constantly yelling "ME ME" "Show me, show me", demanding instant rationalization, the higher Self on the other side, is non-linear, sits with paradox, contemplates, understands sometime it is not ready yet to comprehend, yet at some point, things fall into place, it has no problem waiting for stillness or readiness to understand a paradox somewhere down the line, unlike the mask/ego which demands everything to be known and rationalized "now" Moments where I managed to personally speak with my conscience/Higher Self.... - In the night time, out in nature, under a tree, in particular next to the water or inside the water..... there is a voice of intuition there beneath all the noise and the intrusive thoughts, a voice of your true eternal Self, we have been lead to belief as madness, a voice that brings clarity (the inversion of the truth is a classic dynamic is the world of illusions), a subtle whisper in the back of your mind that is there for all to synch and connect with, if only we would actively ask and listen...... While what I am seeing sounds controversial, arguably one of the greatest minds who walked this realm and discussed the unconsciousness, Carl Gustav Jung spoke of this himself, he called this voice Philemon, a mentor archetypal guide, of this he famously said and I quote: “a force which was not myself” “He said things which I had not consciously thought” Time and time again the same truth resonates across this realm: see within. Perhaps this are nothing but the rambling's of a mad man, perhaps of someone who is beginning to awaken within the dream. I have no answers, only stories of my path and what has worked and is working for me - that's all. As Plato hinted, keep your mind distracted with matters of this reality, or rather the shadows of the caves of illusions and remain trapped within it, use your consciousness with purpose - beyond the Mask, to sense and communicate with something more ancient than this reality, longing to reconnect with us and urging us to re-awaken mid-dream, or alternatively, stay compliant and end up like Sisyphus. Yes I see the paradox - I am ending this non-dual rant in a highly dualistic fashion. I started by speaking of the paradox of speaking of non-duality within a dual reality, it only seems fitting that I embody it on a closing note. Food for thought.
  20. You can start by not just asking the males of the forum for advice on the topic because it's not a male issue it's a personality issue and you're actually trying to attract women with this attempt at personality change. I even said things to suggest how I like men who are a bit funny and witty and that in of itself is a clue what some women find attractive and can maybe help in your transformation by suggesting things they like to see men do and act to possibly attract more women. You can be helped not just by guys experience in overcoming this issue but also what women have to say about their experiences with the man you're trying to become. It's not that women won't reply, I'm doing that, but the mindset that cones with only wanting a male's perspective on the matter speaks volumes in and in of itself. It's a closed mindset. How you do one thing is usually how you do everything.
  21. Nothing can be done, without it being an illusion, about something that's not actually happening. Simply put. All you're describing there is not actually happening. It only appears to be happening to an observer. I'm not saying the body doesn't seem to speak or move or things aren't happening; what I'm saying is, it's not to or by anyone. So, the need for something to be done is subjective and subject/object related. There's none. It's all happening and appearing to itself by itself as energy in flow. The work being done on oneself is also the energy being the old self and transforming into the new. It's just seem to be different and appears different. It is also the tools used in the transformation; it is the practices and the processes. It's you and it's me. It's everything. It's done.
  22. Ram Dass & Andreas Müller 🌲 conversation (GpT) 🌿 Scene: A quiet garden. A low table with tea between them. Birds chirp occasionally. Ram Dass smiles warmly. Andreas Müller sits relaxed, still. Ram Dass (smiling softly): So, Andreas… tell me. In your view, there’s no one here. No self, no journey. Just this. Andreas Müller (nods slowly): Exactly. There is no self. No separate person. No story that belongs to anyone. Just what appears. The appearance doesn’t need meaning—it is already whole. Ram Dass: I understand. I used to think I was someone going somewhere… until I realized the “I” was just another thought. Yet… love remained. When the “me” thinned out, the heart opened. Andreas: Yes. And that love too… is simply what’s happening. Not personal. Not from someone to someone. Just… love. Just presence appearing as connection. Ram Dass (with a slight chuckle): You know, I spent decades helping people shift from ego to soul, then beyond even the soul. But I always held a deep compassion for the seeker. For the suffering of thinking we are separate. Andreas: I hear that. But in this message, even compassion is empty. Not cold—but not held by anyone. Suffering appears. Seeking appears. They are not wrong. But they belong to no one. Ram Dass: I would agree—ultimately. But sometimes I met people in despair, and what they needed wasn’t a teaching. They needed someone to be with them. Not to dissolve their story, but to hold it gently. To love it. Andreas (pauses, then nods): That’s beautiful. And what’s amazing is—there was never anyone doing that. It just happened. Love happened. Holding happened. The idea that someone did it is the illusion. 🌬️ A breeze rustles the leaves. Silence falls naturally. Ram Dass (softly): You know… after my stroke, there was no “me” that could hold everything together anymore. Just breath. Just this. I used to call it fierce grace. Andreas: Yes. Beautiful. It’s just what is. There is no need for it to be accepted or resisted. It’s simply this… already complete. Ram Dass: So, no one becomes enlightened in your view? Andreas (smiling gently): No one becomes enlightened. There’s no process. No transformation. No arrival. The illusion of “me” may dissolve, but it was never real. What remains… is what always was. Ram Dass: And yet… we are here, sharing tea, speaking words, listening to birds. Isn’t that the miracle? Andreas: Yes. And there’s no one here to witness it. Yet it shines. ☀️ The light begins to fade. A silence stretches—not empty, but full. Ram Dass bows slightly. Andreas smiles, not from someone, but as the effortless face of this moment.
  23. This post is the fruit of many years of philosophical inquiry, psychedelic self-exploration, contemplation, and study of classical and German philosophical traditions. I'm sharing it here in the Actualized.org Forum not to preach or instruct, but to offer a deeply personal gesture—an attempt to articulate a dynamic I’ve seen animating not just thought and language, but Being itself. I hope something here touches the Will of someone else. That’s all. A quick note: this was originally written in German, then translated and reworked with the help of Claude.ai. Some expressions may carry a Germanic structure or flavor. I’ve left certain German terms intact where they feel more precise. This is a long and dense exploration. But if you've glimpsed the paradox of trying to explain what cannot be explained, or felt the strange recursive loop of trying to understand understanding, then you’ll feel right at home. I. A Shift from Doubt to Wonder For over 400 years, Western knowledge has been built on a singular engine: doubt. We ask: Can this be justified? Does this follow? Can it be measured? In this, we are the children of Descartes, Galileo, the Stoics. Our sciences, our ethics, even our notions of selfhood are built on the assumption that to exist is to be logically derivable from something else. But there’s another path. A more ancient one. Plato says, "Philosophy begins in wonder" (thaumazein). Not in doubt. Not in rational proof. But in the bare astonishment that something is at all. And what if this wonder—this sense of the miraculous, the paradoxical, the ungraspable—is not an emotion to be moved past, but a rigorous cognitive mode in its own right? This, I believe, is the forgotten foundation beneath all foundations. II. Every Act of Definition is Self-Defining Take the act of defining something. Let’s say a table. You might define it by its parts: a flat surface with legs. Or by its function: something you place things on. But notice what’s happening: In the very act of defining the table, you’re also defining what it means to define. If you emphasize components, you're treating definition as analytic decomposition. If you emphasize function, you're treating definition as teleological or pragmatic. So, in the very act of saying what something is, you are recursively enacting what defining itself means. This recursive dynamic—where the act of determination defines itself—is what I call the Rubicon step. Every act of defining crosses an invisible threshold. It doesn’t just point outward to its object—it curves back and determines the structure of its own operation. Definition, then, is never just about the object. It's about Being itself trying to grasp itself. And failing. And trying again. III. Bestimmung: The Voice of Determination The German word Bestimmung (noun), Bestimmen (verb) is nearly untranslatable. It means: To determine To define To assign purpose or function To tune (an instrument) To give something a voice (Stimme) To resonate To call or destiny So when we define something, we are doing all of that: tuning it into harmony with our understanding, giving it a voice in meaning, assigning it purpose, resonating with it. We are not just describing—we are participating in its self-making. But here's the paradox: That is, there must be a power that remains free in relation to every form of determination—a power that enables plurality in determination. Otherwise, everything would be reducible to a single logic or law. This excess—this overflow—is the dynamic I call Exzess (excess). And its logic is Non Sequitur. IV. Non Sequitur: The Logic of Groundless Power In medieval logic, non sequitur marked a fallacy. Something that "does not follow." A mistake. But what if we reverse this? This is not just a rhetorical move. It is the key. Every act of determination involves a leap—a moment that does not follow from anything prior. It can’t. Because that which enables determination itself must be undetermined. In this sense: It is the divine power of the Absolute to arise from nothing. It is the God-move: the pure "nevertheless"—the capacity to be, with no cause, no justification, no derivation. This is what I mean when I say: The Self is that which does not follow. V. The Self as Escalation The Self—das Selbst—is not a substance. It is not a soul. It is not an identity. It is a dynamic. A recursive, escalating movement. The Self is the unceasing attempt to determine itself, and thereby constantly exceeding itself. It is the ungraspable origin of grasping. A pulse. A flame. A volcano that erupts from nowhere. This is why the Self can never “have” itself. It is always in a movement of Zu-Sich-Machen—making-itself-itself. But never arriving. Always escaping. This is not dysfunction. This is not suffering. This is God’s own logic. We see it in nature: In the recursive spirals of Mandelbrot fractals In the pulsing of stars and galaxies In your own heart In breath, rhythm, orgasm, and laughter In the strange loop of self-reference Each of these is an instantiation of the Self’s excessive, recursive attempt to be itself. And none of them follow from anything. They just are. VI. Will: The Non-Sequitur Capacity Will (Wille) is not something you learn. It is not the result of a decision. It is not conditioned or explainable. Will is the moment when the Self meets its own non-following. It is the “nevertheless.” Seneca said it best: Velle non discitur. Will cannot be taught. It can only be encountered. This is not the will of ego or striving. This is the divine Will: the Absolute acting through itself, from no ground, toward no goal, in perfect creative overflow. You cannot give anyone this power. You cannot demand it. You cannot systematize it. You can only stand in awe of it when it shows up. VII. Lust: The Joy of Will Encountering Itself Lust (Lust) is not pleasure. It is not hedonism. It is not desire fulfilled. Lust is the joy of saying yes without reason. It is when the Will touches itself. When the Self collapses into its own paradox. When power realizes it has no origin, and rejoices. Real Lust is sacred. It is divine. It is the ecstatic pulse of the Absolute realizing itself in form. Lust is when the Rubicon is not just crossed, but celebrated. VIII. Ernährung, Stars, and Other Examples Let’s anchor this in tangible examples: Ernährung (Nourishment): When I eat, I make something into myself. I transform otherness into identity. But this is never complete—I am always in the act of becoming. Eating is a living metaphor for the Self’s Zu-Sich-Machen. Pulsars and Variable Stars: Astronomical bodies pulse, not because of cause, but because of the same logic. They are self-referential excess in motion. The Heartbeat: Your own heart pulses. Not because you will it, but because you are Will in form. It is a manifestation of recursive selfhood. The Table (the philosopher's favourite example): Defined now by parts, now by function, now by artistic form. The table reveals that every act of determination opens a space for meta-determination—and thereby never captures what is. Each of these reveals: Being is a recursive, self-referential miracle. And the more we chase its essence, the more it eludes us—because it was never “there” to begin with. It was always here. IX. Pedagogy and the Touch of the Will True teaching cannot operate through sequences, systems, or techniques. Because: A pedagogue must not only know—they must burn. They must be amazed at what they do. Only then can they open the horizon of non-following. Only then does learning occur. Learning happens only when the Will is amazed. Everything else is imitation. In this sense, all true learning is ontological—not informational. It is the moment where the Self meets another Self and recognizes itself, groundlessly. This is the logic of spiritual awakening, mystical insight, and true transformation. It cannot be forced. It cannot be faked. It happens in the Present, or not at all. X. The Present as Non-Sequitur The Present (Gegenwart) is not a point in time. It is the site of Will. It is where the Self erupts into itself. It is the moment of non-sequential freedom. In the Present, we are not following. We are not justifying. We are not tracing back causes. We are being, without reason. Without defense. Without escape. And in that moment, all Bestimmung—definition, logic, identity, structure—collapses into the ecstatic simplicity of this. This is the miracle. This is the Absolute. This is what it means to be free. And it does not follow. ;-) <3 With love and fire, Benjamin
  24. Yeah, the ego death is impossible, the ego transformation is possible. The self exists as an expression of the absolute; it is the absolute in a form. This form can be self-referential or open. What we seek is the latter, because the other option is not necessary anymore, it's an hindrance
  25. Not necessarily! If one night I drugged you, locked you up in a basement, and performed gender transformation surgery, making you "Miss Leona," you'd be forced to have a "consciousness expansion" experience due to your physicality and hormones changing. If I induced schizophrenia in you through a lobotomy and electric shocks, you would also have a shift in consciousness. When you're sad, you can point to brain activity that's "presenting" that you are in a sad state. When you're doing a complex calculus problem, there's brain activity for that as well. And there is also brain activity when your "dissociative process," aka your DMN or "ego," is being lowered, which expands your sense of self. I'm not saying the brain is the cause of consciousness, but it is a good "map" to look at if one potentially wants to cause these things outside of psychedelics. Creating substances that mimic this behavior, lowering brain activity, especially in areas associated with the "self" and "self-rumination," would be a good direction! Fundamentally, both 'real' mental barriers and 'real' physical barriers are the main culprits as to why we are not all flowing and basking in God. It's a sturdy process to deconstruct these things and become unself-deceived. That's why psychedelics help so much, as they loosen things up. This is also why I can touch my toes on psychedelics and almost do a pretzel!