Posts by Sam Martinez9

A lone wolf can hold his own; he can hunt, eat, and endure the elements entirely on his own, right up until old age, sickness, or an injury finally takes him. It’s the same fate he would face within a pack, just perhaps under different circumstances.

Historically speaking, humans simply weren't built for solitude. If you were cast out from your tribe, you were essentially a dead man walking—starvation or infection would claim you quickly. Our ancestors couldn't survive a broken arm or a leg injury without someone there to tend the wound and provide food while they healed.

The same logic applies today, though we often fail to see it. Modern "lone wolves" aren't actually solitary creatures. They still shop at Target or Walmart, buy their clothes online, rely on the power grid, and depend on municipal water and sewage systems to function.

The only real difference is that these individuals convince themselves they’ve minimized their interaction with the rest of society.

But have they really?

It’s certainly different than it used to be, certainly. Back before smartphones became ubiquitous, if you needed something from someone, you had to physically go to them, look them in the eye, and speak to them directly. Nowadays, you just send a quick text or fire off an email.

In the past, your social circle was usually limited to a handful of people from your school, your neighborhood, or your office. Today, you have all of those connections, plus the people you interact with on digital forums, the personalities you watch on TV, or the voices you listen to on the radio.

Sure, you might lack physical proximity, but honestly, you don't need to be hugging and kissing everyone you meet; human connection is fundamentally about the exchange of ideas, not necessarily physical touch.

A true lone wolf in modern America would be someone who systematically severs all ties to human contact—someone living entirely without radio, television, books, the internet, a job, or even the occasional trip to the grocery store.

Do such people exist today? If they do, they are incredibly rare.

Most people who claim to be lone wolves are simply operating under a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to participate in a human society.

hollowpuma762 said:There are a few instances, sure, but that comment about Monsanto is the perfect example. It’s just pure guesswork regarding serious issues, yet it's being presented as if it's an established fact. It really just comes down to how things are phrased.

Now that’s a classic piece of sarcasm right there.

She didn't help you realize anything new.

Spirituality lives within people and themselves, not on some internet forum. A forum can provide information to help someone rationalize the spiritual side of reality and the human experience.

The rest is up to them.

This isn't merely my subjective opinion; it is the consensus held by a large portion of the scientific community and an even larger segment of geneticists. Of course, there are scientists and geneticists who hold different views, but for the purpose of this discussion, that isn't the point. The point is that this isn't just my personal take.

A forum is composed of people—users—from whom I then seek spirituality. At the very least, what one can find on a forum is information. You can find information here simply by having another user point you toward the specific data you are looking for.

A forum exists for conversation, and conversations are driven by people.

Joseph Bailey41 said:I honestly think you won't really wrap your head around it until you've spent years studying the ether. ☕

Thanks.

You’ve helped me realize—much faster than I expected—that there’s nothing for me here.

My personal take is that this "Spirituality" forum is actually devoid of any true spirituality. I've only spent a few hours browsing, so my perspective might be skewed, but I don't see anything spiritual happening here, regardless of how they choose to define the word.

hollowpuma762 said:Look, just because you’re relying entirely on subjective takes and presenting your own assumptions as if they’re gospel truth doesn't mean everyone else is following your exact same flawed logic.

If someone is pointing out that specific method, there's usually a reason—it means people actually recognize the flaws in that kind of thinking.
Continuing to use the same broken approach while knowing damn well where it fails? That’s just plain stupid.

I'm curious—where exactly in my posts are you seeing this "subjective interpretation"?

hollowpuma762 said:

Sam Martinez9 I've been thinking about this... honestly, I don't know where to start. It’s all just a mess. Everything feels like it's circling the drain lately, doesn't it? Just one thing after another. I was reading some stuff earlier—just trying to make sense of the chaos—and it really hits home how little control we actually have over any of this. It's exhausting. You try to stay informed, you try to keep up, but it feels like the goalposts are constantly moving. Just... ugh. Anyway, that's just my two cents. Probably shouldn't have even typed it out. My mistake.
Look, I was born in the 21st century. I was raised to give zero damns about bowing down to anyone. You have to look at the context—those religious texts? They were written back when kings and emperors ran the show, during an era where everyone was expected to grovel before some higher authority. It's just not how things work anymore.

Look, it’s not about some weird obsession with bowing down to people or worshiping them like idols. It isn't that. It's just about actually knowing who's in charge and having enough damn respect to recognize the forces at play here.

Look, knowing about—and actually respecting—the higher powers in this world? It’s got nothing to do with kings or emperors or whatever titles people use to feel important. It’s really just about access. It’s about whether the knowledge exists at all, and if enough people can actually get their hands on it. If you don't know what's going on, and you don't respect it, that's not some deep moral failing. It's just a byproduct of being kept in the dark. Pure ignorance, plain and simple.

If you're asking for my take on this... well, here it is. My two cents. Take it or leave it.

Some people out there genuinely believe we’ve all just collectively slid into an era of pure, unadulterated idiocy.

Look, let's get one thing straight: we haven't actually mastered genetic engineering. Not even close. People love to talk about it like we've got God's playbook open on the desk, but we don't. And honestly? Trying to compare actual cross-species breeding to some scientist messing around with DNA in a lab... it’s just not in the same league. It's total nonsense.

That is, according to your interpretation.

Joseph Bailey41 said:Thanks for the compliment, but I was definitely raised and shaped by the values of the last century. 😳

They tried to push all sorts of authorities and holy books on me (like they do with everyone, really), but I’ve always found secular literature much more convincing. That doesn't mean I don't occasionally turn to a spiritual practice if it feels meaningful or necessary in the moment, though.

The specific decade doesn't really matter—evolution doesn't care about our calendars.

Secular literature serves as the foundation; you can't build anything significant without a solid base. Chemistry, biology, physics, psychology, sociology... every individual should at least grasp the basics, assuming their daily responsibilities don't allow them to become experts in every single field.

Then comes philosophy, allowing us to engage with the insights and perspectives regarding the world and humanity left behind by our ancestors.

From there, based on all that knowledge, one should attempt to draw some sort of conclusion about ourselves and the world we inhabit.

As for religious texts and religion itself—they are essential to study. Without understanding them, you simply cannot comprehend humanity. They explain where we have been, why we are the way we are, and perhaps where we are headed.

Joseph Bailey41 said:Pretty much. But honestly, we’re moving out of religious territory and straight into sci-fi now. If we want to follow that logic, there's even the possibility that we eventually engineer some kind of god or gods capable of time travel, meaning they could already be walking among us. Sort of like a Terminator. 😬

Either way, I just don't see any reason why we'd end up worshipping a miracle like that.

Of course you don't see a reason to worship a creator or a god.

You are a product of the 21st century, raised in an era where the idea of bowing to anyone is practically foreign. Most religious texts were penned during the age of kings and emperors—an era defined by absolute devotion to higher authorities.

Humanity (and you included) has finally outgrown its infancy, and we've moved past being toddlers. We are currently somewhere in the midst of our awkward adolescence.

We still have quite a bit of growing, working, and creating left to do before we actually reach maturity.

Joseph Bailey41 said:Look, that's the one God I’m actually agnostic about. It's just as likely we'll end up in hell before He even gets the chance to judge us.

I'm with you on that.

However, if they actually manage it, there's a real possibility that some lifeforms—the kind we engineer and seed across distant planets in some far-off corner of the universe—will look back at us, their creators, and see us as gods with the power to conjure life from nothing.

And then a new cycle begins, because from where I'm standing, everything seems to move in these endless loops.

Joseph Bailey41 said:Ether isn't even a real thing. 😬

Comparing GMOs to homegrown tomatoes is like comparing apples to oranges—it’s a total false equivalency. People have been "creating" new plant varieties through selective breeding and hybridization since forever, often pairing the process with all sorts of strange little rituals.

Honestly... if Mark Vjedrogonja from Pancip ever decided to publish his own rituals, spiritual techniques, or meditation guides, I’d probably be the first one to try them out just to protect my tomato patch from a hailstorm. Provided, of course, they aren't overly complicated or dangerous to my health. If I noticed they actually worked—like, say, if the hail miraculously skipped over my garden entirely—I’d keep doing them. But don't get it twisted; that wouldn't make me a believer.

It’s a given that people have always engineered new plants and animals (think purebred dogs) through selection and controlled breeding.

The real distinction lies in the methodology; modern man has mastered genetic engineering, gaining the ability to manipulate life by directly combining specific genes.

And sure, a GMO tomato might not taste quite as good as one grown in a backyard garden—but hang on, we’re still in the early stages. We’re just beginning to learn how to build.

We’ll continue to advance.

Until the day we figure out how to alter our own genetic makeup using nothing but the power of our minds.

That is when we will truly become gods.

Joseph Bailey41 said:Haha! Honestly, once Shaban’s hair starts turning gray, I know he’s telling the truth. We’re all just regular people at the end of the day. After all, being human is what defines us. 😬

But seriously, what if there are two guys named Mark in Chicago? It's unlikely they're twins. Or maybe someone there even named their canary Mark. Who am I really arguing with if I'm just disputing some guy from Chicago? It's getting way too complicated for my brain.

Besides, why would I even deny him? It would be a different story if you told me Mark could time travel or manifest a cheeseburger out of thin air. Then I’d tell you you're talking nonsense and wouldn't bother asking whether Mark is a man or a bird.

Anyway, I don't deny beings that possess powers attributed to God, and I certainly don't lose sleep over what they look like.

Now, I might actually believe in a Vjedrogonja if I saw one in action, like someone casually moving clouds around without using any high-tech gadgets.

Humans are increasingly gaining ground, mastering abilities once reserved for God. It's true we can't conjure life from nothingness just yet, but we certainly can manipulate living things to create entirely different plants or animals.

A GMO tomato is fundamentally different from a "natural" one; it was engineered in a lab.

And while time travel remains out of reach, a smartphone would have seemed just as miraculous—if not more so—to my late grandmother as a burrito appearing from the ether.

In a hundred years, conjuring food from thin air might be such a mundane occurrence that our great-grandchildren will look back in sheer disbelief at the "ancient" technology of baking pastries in electric ovens.

Joseph Bailey41 said:There are plenty of different ways a Man can learn to get a handle on his thoughts and emotions. Some of them are even standard practice in clinical medicine. It honestly feels like we’ve already evolved past all this struggle, but for some reason, nobody bothered to send out the memo. 😬

Quite right.

One can certainly suppress anger or rage; you can choose to hold back from shouting at a bratty kid or a family member who is testing your patience... essentially, you can manage your emotions. Some people handle this better than others, though I suspect it often comes down to how much an individual deems emotional self-control to be a priority.

Managing grief, however, is a far more difficult proposition. A close friend of mine lost her son, and she has shared how impossible it often feels to halt the waves of sorrow and the destructive toll they take.

Then there is love—we don't really get a say in who we fall for, nor can we simply order ourselves to fall in love or move on on command. I’ve seen plenty of people discover their partner is being unfaithful, yet find themselves utterly unable to stop loving them.

The mind is slightly easier to steer, particularly for those who practice meditation or similar psychological techniques.

Addiction remains incredibly difficult to overcome. Regardless of how aware a Man might be regarding the toxicity of nicotine, alcohol, or drugs, it often requires years of grueling struggle to truly break free.

There is more to discuss, but I think this covers the essentials for now.

Joseph Bailey41 said:So, there you have it. Even as an atheist who prides herself on thinking for herself, I can decide for myself which chemical reactions are worth celebrating and which ones just don't matter. I don't believe in God, but I’m still going to go ahead and meditate for a bit—without worrying about what kind of reaction that might trigger.

Not quite.

If things actually worked the way you’re claiming, we wouldn't need pharmaceuticals. I believe they're called psychotropic drugs, and their whole purpose is to do exactly what you think you can do on your own—essentially elevating certain chemical reactions while suppressing others.

The idea that a person can independently control the chemical processes within their own brain and body without medical intervention? Well, I suspect we won't see that until the next stage of human evolution.

I find myself being the exact opposite of a lone wolf. I need someone to be there; I need to live for someone and work for someone else—doing things just for my own sake simply isn't in my nature. I’ve found that sense of purpose through my children. Everything I do is for them, even though they're grown adults now and don't technically "need" me in the way they once did. And granted, they aren't perfect; they have their flaws, just like anyone else.

That said, my social temperament is a different story entirely. I often find people quite tedious. It feels like everyone is stuck on the same repetitive topics that fail to capture my interest at all. For instance, a woman from the office next door will wander into my cubicle and launch into this exhaustive saga about her neighbor’s latest drama, even though I don't know the woman and couldn't care less about her life. I listen politely, and that’s where the interaction ends. I don't feel the need to chime in with some anecdote about my own neighbor doing this or that just to keep the momentum going. People seem to appreciate me because I listen without boring them with my own trivial stories.

Shopping, fashion, footwear, celebrity gossip... none of that has ever interested me. Unfortunately, when I try to bring up the subjects that actually fascinate me, nobody seems to want to engage. So, I usually just stay quiet.

That’s why I retreat into books; that’s where I find the substance I’m looking for. And, of course, this forum.

William Anderson5 said:That’s the fundamental issue with restructuring and privatization. These messy processes are a byproduct and a symptom of socialism, not capitalism. You don't see this kind of thing happening in the USA, France, or the UK, yet it's everywhere in places like Ukraine and Russia.

Essentially, we're seeing how socialism paved the way for systemic corruption during periods of transition. In truly capitalist nations, there was no "transition" period, so there was no transitional crime to speak of...

In short, the restructuring and privatization processes were nothing more than legalized theft.

Assets were stripped away from the very people who built them, only to be handed over to whoever happened to be in favor or simply incompetent at the time.

nimblemarlin6 said:Since socialism is supposedly worthless, we might as well privatize everything!

But then, once the privatization was complete, suddenly those companies were worth plenty when it came time to sell them off.

The end result? The owner walks away with the cash, leaving behind no company and absolutely no jobs for the local community. 😁

Exactly.

And now, roughly 330 million Americans across the former America are left to deal with the fallout.

Is there really anything else to be said?

Perhaps I should add—even today, you still run into thousands of people who will tear themselves apart just to prove those companies were truly worthless, that socialism was nothing... and that things are incomparably better now.

My take on it? People truly get what they deserve. So let them enjoy the fruits of capitalism.

Let’s be honest: capitalists aren't losing any sleep over the idea of worker self-management.

First off, tearing down a system of worker control is surprisingly easy. Look at how quickly the self-managed socialism in the USA collapsed—it fell like a house of cards.

The workers didn't stand a chance of keeping their companies, either. They were basically told their businesses were worthless because they were "socialized" assets. Then came the wave of restructuring and privatization, where workers were either pushed into early retirement or left sitting at unemployment offices while the factories were handed over to various people like Rajić or Kulteim.

Secondly, even in a small business, getting two co-owners to actually work together is a nightmare. I’ve seen it happen even with biological brothers. One wants to go left, the other wants to go right; one wants to pay the water bill, the other forgets the electricity... before you know it, within six months, the partnership is dead.

The truth is, humanity hasn't evolved enough for true self-governance. People still instinctively crave a leader, a boss... someone to step up and make the final call.

Self-management requires a level of humanity and maturity that we just haven't reached yet. It demands a genuine hunger for learning and collective knowledge, but we're still essentially shaking off the remnants of a feudal mindset.

Give it maybe five hundred or a thousand years, and things might look different.

Peter Phillips32

One more thing.

Since every answer just seems to trigger another question, there's one specific thing I'd love to get from you:

Why do you think that?

I mean, is it because you genuinely don't feel what I'm feeling deep within your own self, or is it simply because you're drawing that conclusion from everything you've learned up to this point? In other words, is your response merely the logical byproduct of your accumulated knowledge?

Peter Phillips32 said:Well, if you don't know how to frame your question and you keep getting useless answers, then maybe next time you should figure out how to word it so you don't end up with those same wrong answers you already know aren't helpful.

So, just ask it again in a way that won't trigger those incorrect responses you aren't looking for in the first place.

That's just how you handled it. You reached into your own little stash of knowledge and pulled out something that might sound like an answer, but it isn't. Because I know damn well what continuity is, and I'm fully aware of my own growth. I can look back at myself as a five-year-old kid who knew nothing and had certain emotions, and compare that to who I am today—a woman in her fifties who knows what she knows about the world, politics, people, nations, biology, economics... and so on.

You can only be aware of your own nature evolving in a theoretical sense; having the idea of such change is one thing. But thinking you actually know who you were as a five-year-old? That’s most likely just a manufactured memory mixed with a tiny bit of reality. Those generalizations about how five-year-olds act are just that—tiny bits of reality—and the rest is just making stuff up by stitching those generalizations onto fragments of childhood memories.

If you really want to convince me I wrote something wrong, you're going to have to try a lot harder than that. Nothing short of posing the "right question" and finding the right answer is going to move the needle for me. And honestly, just a heads-up: stop lecturing me on my "wrong beliefs" regarding how much of memory is made up, and just focus on finding the "right question." I mean, hey, it's your call which matters more to you.

Isn't it kind of weird how everyone who disagrees with him is automatically wrong, as if this "guru of humanity" simply must be right? It's almost like—dare I say it—he's just another spiritualist in a long line of guys delivering monologues about their own superior truth. If reverse psychology exists, then this guru of humanity is the first one to actually prove "reverse gurulism."

And please, for the love of God, stop throwing in convenient little stories about your anti-guru hero, K. g. U.

But look, I personally met Jesus, and I was hit with these heavy arguments about his Truth, his Path, and his Life back when I was just a kid. There was just one tiny little catch, though. Jesus turned out to be just some kid from the neighborhood.

I mean, when you finally come face-to-face with the most powerful figure in religious history—someone who's basically a guru that avoids anyone with a different opinion like Satan avoids frankincense—what happens?

Honestly, you've got pretty low standards if you're just one of those people who thinks, "Well, as long as at least one person finds happiness," and then you pat yourself on the back thinking you've accomplished your life's mission.

You're standing at a crossroads here, and you've got a choice: you can keep churning out these massive mountains of nonsense text just to reach one or two people who will become your mindless little cult followers, or you can actually try to explain your ideas concisely and clearly, aiming to foster some actual understanding through real conversation.

Oh, I intend to ask again. I'll pose the question once more, though certainly not right now—there’s just no point in doing it this second. The opportunity will present itself again eventually. Or perhaps it won't. It's entirely possible that I'll never actually land on an answer to this particular inquiry. Still, I suppose it doesn't matter much; so many questions in this life go unanswered anyway. I can live with that.

That doesn't mean the answers—including yours—are insignificant. In fact, it’s quite the opposite; they carry immense weight. Through this process, I've managed to uncover things I hadn't even realized I was looking for. It's funny, really; I've found myself answering questions I didn't even know I had posed to my own self.

I have no desire to persuade you, nor anyone else, of anything. That isn't my purpose here. I'm not here to peddle my own answers or convince people to adopt my perspective; I am simply here to find the answers to my own questions.

I only laid everything out like that to make sure my question was clear; I wasn't trying to force my perspective on you or win an argument.

In the end, you’ve actually managed to answer my question, haven't you? You seem convinced that I'm just cheating my way through this, or perhaps that I've simply lost my way. You hold this conviction that there isn't some immutable core within a person—that there is nothing unchanging in the human soul. In your view, the man I am today at fifty-something is operating under the exact same flawed preconceptions about himself that he held back when he was only five years old. That is essentially your position, and for that clarity, I thank you.

Peter Phillips32 said:Look, the whole deal with the human spirit—that sense of being a complete, unified self—is its continuity. Every single morning when you roll out of bed, you’re still you. Plain and simple. Sure, your nature (the way your human spirit actually functions) might shift around. Even if you flip-flop your mood or change your mind about something (or swap out any other part of yourself), you’re still fundamentally the same person. That’s why what we call our "current nature" is just that—it's current. People tend to label whatever mood or disposition they happen to be in right now as their "true" self simply because it’s convenient[1] or fits the moment.

[1] Opportune - appearing at a specific time; timely or appropriate.

The fact that you're leaning so hard into this idea of "childlike curiosity and wonder" right now actually colors how you look back at your own past. This kind of emphasis shapes how your memories are even formed in the first place. If you were to pull out those other sides of your memory, you’d probably get a much clearer, more complex picture, proving that depending on where you're standing emotionally, you actually construct slightly different versions of what happened.

I'm wondering if there are any other people on this forum who feel the exact same way, who have this same impression of themselves.

Is there some deep, essential reason why you're hunting for others who think like this, or are you just looking for some kindred spirits to make chatting a little easier?

That isn't really the point. It seems you haven't quite grasped what I'm getting at, either.

And that’s exactly why I find myself constantly looking for people on these forums who think along similar lines. I'm essentially searching for those who have walked a comparable path—people whose own lived experiences might offer them the necessary context to truly grasp the nature of my questions.

I can't exactly crawl inside someone else's head to see what they’re actually thinking or feeling, of course. I can only ever get a secondhand glimpse through their words and descriptions. But I suspect I'm not some singular anomaly here; I assume there are plenty of others out there who feel exactly the same way.

I have to say, I’ve posed this question several times now, and much like my experience just now, I haven't actually received a real answer. Even when someone does take the time to respond, it becomes painfully obvious that they didn't truly grasp what I was getting at in the first place.

So, why didn't he get what I was driving at? There are a few ways to look at it. First off, my description probably wasn't sharp enough; if you don't lay it out clearly, people aren't going to see themselves in the narrative. Then there's the issue of comprehension—they simply missed the point entirely. It could also be that they haven't walked the same path I have. Or, more likely, even if they *do* share the same experiences, they just reach into their own little mental stockpiles and pull out whatever fragment of information they think constitutes an answer, when in reality, it’s completely irrelevant to the core of the matter.

You’re the one who put that together. You reached into your own reservoir of information to pull out what you thought might be an answer, but it just isn't. I have a very clear understanding of what continuity actually means, and I am acutely aware of the other side of that coin—my own personal evolution. I can look back and vividly recall being a five-year-old child who knew absolutely nothing, feeling all those raw, unformed emotions, and hold that up against the woman I am today. Now, in my fifties, I carry a lifetime of accumulated perspective on the world around me—from the complexities of politics and human nature to the intricacies of global affairs, biology, and economics.

Matthew Evans said:What you’re suggesting just doesn't work—and honestly, you've already admitted that yourself by saying we weren't born together. Since we didn't share a birth (and even if we had), our paths haven't been identical. Our experiences aren't the same. Some people spent their lives stacking up wealth, others are still grinding to get there, and some have spent their years accumulating knowledge through trial and error. Then there are people like me, who did all that, only to add one specific experience to the tally—something that fundamentally rewrites the meaning of everything else. That experience—if you can even call it that—is the total redirection of attention back to the Absolute-Self.

Leading up to my return, I felt this intuitive preparation taking hold. It was like portions of Knowledge were just pouring directly into my spirit. The more I realized exactly *how* it was happening, the more frequently it occurred—until eventually, it just became my baseline. It stayed that way, a steady routine, right up until the moment I finally let go. I dropped the logic, shut off the intellect, and merged my spirit with the Absolute-Self. To put it plainly, I experienced what most people spend their whole lives trying to describe as being "Self-God."

No, it isn’t some kind of delusion. Before that moment, even though my spirit was flooded with intuitive insights, I couldn't even wrap my head around what it actually meant. Then, the intellect just... evaporated. I was left alone with my Self. But in that solitude, strangely enough, you aren't actually alone. In fact, it’s more than that—you aren't just a lonely individual; you are the entire container and everything contained within the One. It doesn't feel like isolation. It feels like absolute self-fulfillment. As long as the rational mind stays out of the way—as long as the Being's attention remains fixed on the content of the Absolute-Self—everything that exists becomes crystal clear to itself. It couldn't be any sharper. The essence of everything has finally revealed itself to the Self.

Look, this Being—the One, the only one—is what religion and the masses call God, which is why I framed it that way above. Personally, I call it Will, the Absolute, the Being, or the being-that-is. It could be "the one who is," or some qualitative plurality, or whatever else you want to throw at it. At the end of the day, I know deep down that none of those labels actually change anything about its essence. It remains itself, regardless of the name. 🙂

.

By turning my attention back inward to the human self, I’ve embraced the spirit of creation and the Absolute Knowledge held within it. But here’s the thing: my intellect just can't wrap itself around what that actually looks like. It's impossible to grasp the whole thing in one single moment—not for me, and honestly, not for anyone else either. Yet, despite that mental wall, the Absolute Knowledge remains accessible to me, and I can shape it into words whenever I choose.

That’s why I say what you’re suggesting just isn't doable—not that you don't see it, but it's an impossibility. We weren't born at the exact same moment, nor were we born as the same spirit. Because of that, our perceptions and our grasp of self-existence and being aren't going to match up. You can't exactly walk up to some guy and explain that he has the capacity to know everything any other person has ever known. He’s an individual. He’s got a spirit that belongs only to him. He lacks the lived experience required to actually verify your claims, even if you were standing right there. So, I’m left doing what I feel called to do within that Absolute-Self connection. It’s something I only really grasped after returning to the Self: I give what I know. Period. I don't care who judges how I give, when they judge, or if they even wrap their heads around what I’m talking about. But, since I’m still "alive"—meaning Being is active and present within me—I can engage with everyone I meet here, in this moment. I can listen to their questions and try to offer explanations that feel familiar to them. Still, after doing this every single day for seven or eight years, I’ve realized something: it is impossible to explain something that feels obvious to me to someone whose level of consciousness simply isn't high enough to catch it. Now, that isn't a dig at people with a "lower level of consciousness." It has nothing to do with comparing my value to theirs. It’s just a fact. Some individuals are quite "young" in terms of their cycles of incarnation. Their spirit hasn't accumulated enough Absolute Knowledge to create a foundation where they can easily build upon or integrate new truths into their Self-Being. Another individual might be more seasoned; they've been through the necessary school of life and already possess a massive degree of that Knowledge within them.

Look, this has absolutely nothing to do with IQ. You can have a genius-level IQ, but if you lack the "life experience"—the incarnations—needed to accumulate the right amount of realized Absolute-Self Knowledge, it doesn't matter. Think of it this way: the width of your "consciousness circle," or a specific level of awareness, doesn't dictate its "height." It doesn't change where that consciousness sits within the grand hierarchy of the Being-universe. That’s why we see such a massive spectrum of consciousness among Americans; we aren't all operating at the same stage of experience or incarnation. We haven't all gone through the same cycles required to grasp and truly understand what we think we know.

Understanding alone isn't going to land you at the highest state of existence, but it certainly makes whatever you *do* understand much more useful.

At the end of the day, we all just act according to what our current level of consciousness allows us to do. It follows, then, that those sitting at higher levels have to possess a deeper understanding of those at lower ones. This is exactly why rising in consciousness strips away prejudice; it forces you to become more compassionate.

I think you missed my point.

It’s really about the methodology by which we acquire knowledge and understand the world. Broadly speaking, there are two ways we learn: we either learn independently, or we learn through the mediation of others.

Learning via others can be subdivided even further—learning from authority figures or teachers, learning alongside friends and peers, or even learning *from* someone, where they serve as the subject of your study...

Now, regarding what I was getting at earlier—we can categorize learning through others into two distinct modes: using conflict as a tool, or using cooperation as a tool.

Conflict as a tool is far more prevalent. I mentioned the example of a televised political debate, where two sides clash and essentially *fight* one another using nothing but arguments.

Cooperation, on the other hand, is what you see in scientific research teams or collaborative professional environments.

In my view, cooperative learning is of a much higher quality than learning through conflict, yet conflict remains the dominant method. This forum is living proof of that; ninety-nine percent of what is written here can be reduced to conflict (using arguments, words, quotes, etc.), while perhaps only one percent truly represents cooperation.

The reason for this is quite simple: humanity is still at an evolutionary stage where conflict tends to outpace cooperation. So many global issues are still *settled* through warfare rather than through diplomacy and agreement.

I am a firm believer that this is shifting—that we will see a gradual decrease in friction across all fields and a rise in collaboration.

Warfare will eventually vanish, both in terms of physical combat and verbal aggression. Our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will look back on our era as a barbaric age, much like we look back on the state of the world two thousand years ago.