Posts by Kenneth Peterson5

Edward Flores4 said:How am I supposed to define something that doesn't even exist? I’m talking about something I can't physically feel, something that gives me zero indicators, and absolutely no way to measure or point to it using any kind of data or sensory input. It's like trying to describe a color that hasn't been invented yet—how do you even begin to put words to a complete void?

Responding to someone using their full legal name feels like such a strange social convention to me—it’s basically just a tool we use to make sure we're actually talking to the right person, keeps things organized, and makes life easier for whoever is crunching the numbers for various statistics. But honestly? I don't feel like my name is some core part of my identity. It’s more like a handshake or a basic social contract that I follow just to keep things running smoothly in public.

To be honest, my thoughts aren't even really mine... I used to think I was the one in control of them, but once you start looking closely at how things actually work, you realize that thought is the primary driver—experience is just secondary. Thought is absolute, whereas experience is always relative. And the same logic applies to the "person" having those experiences; the "I" only exists in a relative sense. I didn't just pop into existence out of thin air. Whatever it is that I actually originated from—whatever that source might be—that thing is absolute. It’s the primary reality. You could call it the Mother of all Mothers, the Absolute, the Void, or whatever terminology fits your perspective, but that's where the truth lies.

To be honest, before I really sat with this, I used to walk around thinking that "I" was the one doing all the thinking—you know, that little voice in my head driving the bus. But lately, I’ve come to realize that whole idea is just a total illusion. It’s like looking at a reflection in a moving stream and thinking you can grab it; you just can't identify the thought process with the "self"... or maybe, if we're being precise, it works the other way around. But here's the kicker: if you actually manage to identify that "I" with the Absolute, the entire mechanism of identification just... stops. It’s done. Think of it like a metamorphosis—this process where the subject (the "me" I thought I knew) transforms into a transcendental object (the Absolute). Once you truly see that you *are* the Absolute, the need to identify disappears because there's no longer a separate identity left to cling to. Everything else just falls away, leaving nothing behind but a pure point of awareness.

Awareness itself isn't really some kind of "output" from my hard work—it’s not something I manufacture. Think about it this way: if someone walks into a room carrying an umbrella, provided you actually see the person and the umbrella, can you really *not* be aware of that umbrella entering the space? Of course you can't. So, being aware of my surroundings isn't some product of intense mental effort or focused labor; it’s just a spontaneous interpretation of the shifts happening around me. In a sense, I’m more like a mirror—just a surface reflecting all the changes occurring in my environment. Now, the way we interpret those changes can be totally arbitrary, but it’s also unavoidable. It becomes arbitrary because we tend to mess it up through various levels of denial or by projecting our own stuff onto what we see. But if we could reach that ideal state—where we aren't denying what's right in front of us and aren't projecting our subconscious onto reality—then awareness of the environment is simply a consequence of change itself. And that’s something I can't even claim as "me."

Self-awareness—or what people usually call "self-awareness"—is really just a matter of resonance. Think of consciousness like a mirror; the second that consciousness catches its own reflection, you get self-awareness. It’s not some achievement you can grind for or a product of sheer willpower, either. It's more like pure interference between your consciousness and your perception—kind of like two waves overlapping to create a new pattern. And even then, once you peel back the layers, there isn't really anything left for me to actually latch onto or identify with.

After doing a little bit of "internal inspection," I’ve come to a pretty significant conclusion—consciousness isn't some sort of phenomenon that just pops up "inside" me. Instead, it feels more like the very foundation that I was built upon; it's likely the underlying substrate for my entire existence. Think of it this way: the different segments of our existence basically vary based on how much mobility they have and their general capacity to interact with everything around them. That capacity for interaction includes the ability to make choices when multiple options are on the table—which is exactly what we call free will. In my view, the choices and decisions I make are really the only things I can truly claim as "mine," and because of that, I take full responsibility for them. So, if I’m digging deep to explore the concept of "self," those specific choices are really the only candidates qualified to hold the title of the "ego." But hey, I’m not just floating in a vacuum here... there's a whole world surrounding me, too... and we definitely need to keep that in the equation, right?

So, if consciousness is really the "foundation" of everything, then I’m sharing that same "foundation" with the entirety of existence. Let’s try a metaphor—think of a massive Oak tree, and let's say my "self" is just a single leaf on that tree. Every individual leaf has its own "sense" of being itself and the ability to make decisions on a "local" level. A leaf can turn toward the sunlight, and if enough other leaves decide to turn toward the light, the whole branch will eventually pivot toward the sun. As a leaf, I might think I’m "individual" (in *individuum*—meaning divided) and experience myself as a persona (from *personae*—a voice through a mask, a dramatic mask), making choices that might actually end up hurting the tree as a whole. But since I share this "foundation" with every other leaf, every branch, the bark, the trunk, and the roots... well, that would be pretty foolish. When I make a decision, I have to account for all the other segments of my immediate surroundings that I share a foundation with. This means the "entity" I’m actually deciding in whose interest is much, much larger than this little "leaf" I physically feel like—my very survival is tied directly to the rest of the tree. In other words, I am just one of many "conscious points" on the same tree. If an "I" exists, that "I" IS the entire tree.

Just like my liver doesn't perceive my eyeball, even though they both belong to one single human organism—similarly, I am just one conscious part of the absolute consciousness that serves as the "foundation" of its own existence.

There we go... instead of giving you a dry definition of the ego, I’ve laid out a full analogy to explain why I hold the views I mentioned earlier. If you spot any flaws in that logic, I’d honestly love to sit down and hash it out with you. But as you can see, my perspective doesn't allow me to define what you call the "ego" or claim to possess it—because when I look at "myself," I simply don't find it there.

1) The concept of verifying a claim is fundamentally different from the concept of "becoming" something other than what you already are. I said that the idea of "becoming" something is an ego trip. Verifying someone else's claim (no matter what that claim is) is something else entirely. "Becoming" something and "discovering" what you truly are aren't even similar, let alone comparable concepts.

2) What kind of technique can you use to gradually wake up? How long does it take you to wake up after sleeping? One moment you're asleep, and the next you're awake... probably still groggy, sure, but awake nonetheless. There are no techniques for waking up. You just have to want to wake up RIGHT NOW. No preparation, no specific methods, and no waiting around for a period of change. Transformation is instantaneous; it doesn't require time.

Kenneth Peterson5 said:To me, "self-awareness" means being aware of oneself, whereas "consciousness" would be the current level of cognition—basically the sum total of your thoughts.

rowdyhawk10 said:I suspect you might be mistaken. 🙂 You really should have watched the entire film to understand that it’s nothing more than blatant mainstream propaganda, where biased half-truths are intentionally amplified. I guess everything in it was just taken out of context—distorted and fundamentally false. 😢 My late father and mother didn't experience Islam quite the way the filmmakers seem to be forcing it upon all Muslims—not that I've seen anyone else pushing back against it. It seems obvious from the footage that the creators intend to manufacture a potent wave of anti-Islamic propaganda in the Netherlands, and throughout Europe as well. It feels almost identical to how Hitler's propagandists stirred up the German people against the Jews. I suppose it's a shame you don't see it that way.

I don't really see the filmmakers as independent thinkers so much as they appear to be quite devout Christians. Perhaps a possible reason for this is that Christianity is currently facing a profound crisis. History seems to be repeating itself; something remarkably similar occurred leading up to the Crusades during the Middle Ages.

I suppose I agree that the Quran, if twisted through a distorted lens, can serve as a dangerous weapon in the hands of fanatics. However, I find myself disagreeing with the assessment that the citations themselves are inherently malicious. Warfare has its own logic, governed by established principles of honor and chivalry. It seems to me that you might be viewing these "vicious passages" outside of their original context—which was precisely the intention of the authors of this propaganda pamphlet and hate generator: to package them in such a way. If there is a genuine desire for dialogue, I am willing to address your questions regarding these (or any other) verses of the Quran, in good faith, to demonstrate that they do not contain the malice that certain bad actors attempt to project onto them.

No, I don't think that holds up. If the director hadn't intended to take this specific angle, they would have likely included some nuance or offered an objective perspective—perhaps even a positive example to balance things out, wouldn't they? Instead, everything is framed in such a dark, one-sided light. Because the content feels so biased and skewed, I’d say the film is fundamentally aimed at Islam and Muslims as a whole. If the filmmaker truly wanted to be objective and focus solely on terrorism, they wouldn't go out of their way to cast such broad strokes against the entire religion. To my mind, the creator's message is quite clear, and you can see it plainly in the final moments of the film if you bother to watch it.

The most distasteful and manipulative part of this movie occurs halfway through, when they show an image of a mother holding a child with a bloody head, attempting to frame it as "THE FUTURE OF ISLAM IN THE NETHERLANDS" 😲 In reality, that image depicts a specific ritual practiced by certain Shia groups where children undergo bloodletting on the day of Ashura, marking the martyrdom of Hussein (and mind you, Shias make up less than 10 percent of the Muslim population). I should also mention, since that’s how the film kicks off—that it claims the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center were actually a false flag operation involving suicide bombings orchestrated by the US administration (much like the anthrax attacks) specifically to shift the blame onto Islam. Best,

Kyle Nelson2 said:So, where can you actually go to study Kabbalah?

Brian Foster3 said:

The Ripple Effect

When you talk about economic globalization, you're really talking about tying every single local market to the entire damn planet. Look at what's happening right now—the dollar is tanking because of shifts in the Chinese market, which just goes to show how much of an illusion "independence" actually is for local markets.
We thought we finally figured out how to play the game within this massive connected web, but honestly, is there any better blueprint than looking at nature? It’s the ultimate master of perfectly integrated systems.

They almost took home the big prize
Myron Scholes and Robert Merton had everything a scientist could ever dream of: they held the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, they had prestigious chairs at the top universities in the world, and they were absolute celebrities. But all of that went up in smoke after they took one specific opportunity back in the mid-nineties. Some high-profile broker saw their genius and decided he wanted to put it to work to make a mountain of cash.
Scholes and Metron were convinced that trading on the stock market was basically just like rolling dice; they thought you could measure the probability of every outcome using simple math. Their whole strategy rested on predicting the market through intense statistical studies.
So, these two scientists assembled a powerhouse group of math and economics professors. Then, teaming up with that ambitious broker, they launched a private investment fund designed to squeeze profits out of the market regardless of how things were looking. They called it Long-Term Capital Management. This fund built its entire investment policy around mathematical models, set up shop in a fancy suburb right near Wall Street, and just started rolling.
In just four short years, this fund became the object of pure envy for every single banker and trader on Wall Street. Even the old-school sharks, the real legends of the exchange, couldn't wrap their heads around how this fund was pulling in staggering 40% annual returns without a single loss or even a tiny bit of fluctuation. It looked like these scientists had cracked a magic code by finding patterns within the chaos of the world. In plain English, they found a way to print money.
Even the investment bankers—who are famously skeptical of anything in the business world—were totally floored. Seriously, they were so impressed that they offered to back the fund with $100 billion in credit without even asking for the usual collateral! Before long, the fund was financially tied to every major bank on Wall Street, creating this insanely complicated chain where every single link affected the entire structure.
LTCM seemed invincible until that one catastrophic night in September 1998. The bubble burst. The disaster kicked off from something that seemed totally insignificant—the crash of the Thai currency, the baht. That triggered a massive sell-off across Asian and Eastern European markets, and that snowball just kept rolling until it slammed right into LTCM. The fund completely imploded, sending shockwaves through every economic system across the globe.
It felt like the markets were heading straight for a point of no return. In a desperate move, the legendary Chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, forced the top bankers from Wall Street and Europe to have an emergency meeting behind closed doors. In the end, it was nothing but the prayers of economists and some incredibly expensive decisions to bail out LTCM that kept the world from falling into an even deeper economic abyss.

Collapse is contagious

Watching the dollar slide right now brings back memories of what caused the LTCM collapse. While the dollar has been slipping for a while, the most dramatic drop is being driven by shifts in Chinese policy. China is playing it smart and focusing on its own economy, starting to distance itself from the dollar and redirecting investment payments into other currencies. As the echo of that decision rings around the world, countries like Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Venezuela, Sudan, Iran, and Russia have all started looking at ways to ditch the dollar in trade just to protect their own economies.

We saw this exact same pattern play out during the recent sub-prime mortgage meltdown that kicked off right here in the States before spreading like wildfire across the entire globe. Honestly, the fallout from that absolute disaster is still being felt today. The biggest waves hit everything from Europe and Asia to Canada and Australia, and it wasn't just banks—it trashed corporations, manufacturers, marketing firms, and even high-tech giants.
It feels like every few years, some new "global economic crisis" crawls out of the woodwork, and frankly, all those attempts to predict market trends have been a total joke. Now we’re stuck asking the million-dollar question: how on earth do we build an economic system that actually works and stays stable?
Systems Among Us
The answer is actually pretty straightforward if you look at the wisdom of Kabbalah. And look, you don't need to be some genius economist to get this. You just have to realize that we—and everything we do, including the economy—have to follow the laws of the universal system we call nature.
Kabbalists explain that the overarching plan of nature is to bring all its parts, including us, into perfect unity. In terms of human society, that unification means that everyone's work serves the whole group.
Think about cells in a living body; they are the perfect example because they are all interconnected and give to one another just to keep the whole body functioning. In that flawless system, the body provides the cell with everything it needs, so the cell is totally dedicated to the well-being of the entire organism. In his article “Building the Society of the Future,” the Kabbalist Baal HaSulam writes that “…nature obliges every member to receive needs from society and to contribute to their surroundings through their own labor.”
The artificial systems we've cobbled together in human society are the exact opposite of nature's plan. At the core of human behavior sits the ego, which is what drives these broken systems. Our egos prefer selfish, narrow interests over the good of the collective, constantly chasing wealth, status, and control—often specifically at the expense of everyone else.
This ties directly back to the economy. In our ego-driven economic mess, the main priority for corporations is simply the self-interest of capital and investors. Even when companies claim to be helping society, you really have to wonder if it's just a cheap stunt to get their names splashed in the media for more publicity and a flashy reputation.
Globalization + Ego = The End of the Dead End
After thousands of years of purely egoistic development, we finally find ourselves backed into a corner: the harder we try to profit off one another, the more we realize how deeply interconnected we actually are, just like those cells in a living body I mentioned earlier.
The collapse of Long-Term Capital Management about a decade ago, the current credit crunch, and the ongoing slide of the dollar all prove just how intertwined our systems have become. A tiny tremor in a local market can trigger a massive earthquake in the global economy.
What's more, every single thing we do as consumers ripples through the entire hierarchy of other systems. It's like the "Butterfly Effect"—this "Consumer Effect" works exactly the same way.
When some lady from the suburbs goes to buy something at the local shopping mall, she is significantly impacting lives all over the planet. The products she picks up could decide if a factory stays open, if a family has to pack up and move, or if a child is saved from starving. When some old guy at home flips through the channels on his TV, he's hitting the entire advertising market. One click of a remote can influence jobs and the lives of thousands of people.
Globalization has made our world so incredibly fragile that even the smallest crack can cause a total meltdown. Local events like the mortgage crisis here in the United States, a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, or even just some rattling of weapons in the Persian Gulf, directly impact international trade prices and threaten the stability of the entire global economy.
Where's the exit
“It’s honestly wild how nature acts like some shrewd judge, punishing us based on how much we’ve actually grown. You can see it right in front of your eyes: the more humanity tries to advance, the more pain and suffering we have to endure just to stay afloat.”
Baal HaSulam, "Peace"
The wisdom of Kabbalah gives you a massive, much broader perspective on this whole mess we're in. It basically explains that we're all just kids playing in a sandbox called Earth. Nature is basically raising us like a parent—as we grow up, the expectations placed on us just keep climbing.
According to Kabbalah, humanity is caught between two parallel tracks. On one hand, nature is shoving us toward unity, trying to get us to act like a single, cohesive organism. On the other hand, our individual egos are exploding at an insane rate. The fact that these two things are happening at the exact same time is absolutely no accident.
One way or another, we’re going to be forced to flip the script on our egoism and start acting as one body. But instead of waiting for nature to beat us into submission, Kabbalists suggest there's a way we can actually take the wheel ourselves.
They argue that through our education systems, we could actually raise human consciousness to realize that humanity is essentially one multi-faceted body where everyone is interconnected. By studying the vast systems of nature and how they work, people would finally grasp exactly what kind of changes need to be woven into our social structures so they actually align with the laws of nature.
If we actually lived in harmony with nature, we’d thrive in every single part of our lives, even the economic side of things. Luckily, we already have the science that maps out nature's actual blueprint. We call that science “the wisdom of Kabbalah.”

Anthony Rivera17 said:Thinking is a process we engage in at our own discretion... neither you nor a joint can force my mind to work if I don't want it to, right? So when I discuss the influence of the Marijuana Party,
I am talking about a shift in consciousness and the specific sensation that arises following consumption... you can't
falsely believe you’ve become inherently wiser or more spiritual, but you can certainly be aware that during the cognitive process while high, you tend to produce much more profound and spiritual "outputs"... I know for a fact
that I was more insightful and spiritually connected after smoking; I spent plenty of nights scribbling thoughts down on paper,
and later, once the effects wore off and I read what I had written, it became obvious to me that those
thoughts possessed a depth and spirituality far beyond the ones I produce when I am sober... which, of course,
doesn't mean one should be high constantly, because overdoing it leads to a diminishing return where the body builds up a tolerance to THC and the Marijuana Party starts hitting less and less effectively...

Anthony Rivera17 said:Thinking is a process we engage in at our own discretion... neither you nor a joint can force my mind to work if I don't want it to, right? So when I discuss the influence of the Marijuana Party,
I am talking about a shift in consciousness and the specific sensation that arises following consumption... you can't
falsely believe you’ve become inherently wiser or more spiritual, but you can certainly be aware that during the cognitive process while high, you tend to produce much more profound and spiritual "outputs"... I know for a fact
that I was more insightful and spiritually connected after smoking; I spent plenty of nights scribbling thoughts down on paper,
and later, once the effects wore off and I read what I had written, it became obvious to me that those
thoughts possessed a depth and spirituality far beyond the ones I produce when I am sober... which, of course,
doesn't mean one should be high constantly, because overdoing it leads to a diminishing return where the body builds up a tolerance to THC and the Marijuana Party starts hitting less and less effectively...

Anthony Rivera17 said:You can only claim that if you were actually less wise or spiritual while high...
it works the opposite way for me, which suggests there really is something to the "buzz," and it isn't surprising that those who
want to keep us ignorant are working so hard to ban it!!! Just think about it...

placidjackal36 said:Reiki is pure snake oil—it's pseudoscience born out of religious philosophy, and when people try to use it for medical purposes, it falls squarely into the category of quackery. It’s actually fascinating how such a tiny, self-contained little concept can manage to capture such a massive slice of the human stupidity pie. Astrology is probably its only real rival, but even astrology has a bit of an apparatus behind it—some pseudo-math, a touch of astronomy, and a long tradition—that gives it some sort of staying power.
Reiki is basically waving your hands around and "sending positive vibes" to heal people. Its foundation is about as solid as the claim that the world was created in seven days, or that a teapot orbits the sun, or that paper napkins do the foxtrot when nobody's looking. There is zero basis for it, zero evidence, and best of all, the supposed mechanism they claim to use is already fully explained by biochemistry, which has absolutely nothing to do with their mystical results.
And then they charge you for it... which is just the icing on the cake. 🙏 🙏 🙏

What Anthony Fowler83 said was honestly revolting. You might not know this, but biologically speaking, human races don't exist. "Race" is just leftover terminology from the early days of systematic biological classification.
We are a single species known as Homo sapiens sapiens. Race is something you only really see in segregated societies where there are significant differences, making it more of a sociological phenomenon. Sometimes people categorize others this way just for convenience, like how the police might do it for easier identification.

This isn't about being intolerant or hateful. I don't usually even hang out in this section of the forum. I'll pop in occasionally, see that nothing has changed, and leave. But when I run into this kind of garbage you guys are dragging out, it makes me sick, and I have to say something.

placidjackal36 said:There is no excuse for Anthony Fowler83's mental vomit.
It’s honestly wild how New York can be so incredibly, almost deceptively simple—packaging racism, snake oil, and pure charlatanism in such a "benign" little wrapper. It makes all that garbage look harmless. Wake up, people! Why are you all just burying your heads in the sand?

Anthony Fowler83 said:.........Voodoo stuff—we White people are just different from Black people and other races, it’s not our thing..........

rowdyhawk10 said:I suppose we aren't actually any different from anyone else.

Christian Wells6 said:I find myself compelled to sign my name to this sentiment. I mean, honestly, where is the room for any semblance of intellect within the confines of nationalism? 🤷

swiftcobra15 said:whether it's friendly guidance or valuable insights that challenge my own biases and misconceptions.