Do you have a spiritual mentor, and how much of an impact do they have on your life?

David Vaughn75 said:I explain everything to you three different ways and you still come back with the same questions 🤦

It doesn't matter if the guy is a celebrity or a complete nobody—what matters is whether he actually lives out his own BS. Your soul can sniff out who's legit. Like, look at parents who tell their kid to stay away from sugar while they're sitting there devouring a donut; those people have zero credibility, so their words don't mean squat.

Quincy:

How can you even tell if someone has actually found enlightenment and isn't just lying to you or playing you? Is it based on how smooth they talk, or the peace and compassion they radiate, or maybe all those deep thoughts and that charismatic vibe? They could even be using an aggressive, persuasive style. Honestly, all of that can be rehearsed, especially if the person is a natural performer.

The universe knows exactly what your intentions are, and it sends people your way based on that.

If you aren't looking for anything real and just want something to kill the boredom, that's exactly what you'll get—some con artist selling you smoke and mirrors.
But if you truly want to dedicate your entire life to God, the universe will send you a real teacher.

Quincy:

What does "living out your enlightenment" actually look like in practice? A Zen proverb 😁 says that before enlightenment, a man chops wood and carries water, and after enlightenment, he chops wood and carries water. You can't just watch someone and decide they're enlightened. In fact, they say only someone who's already reached that state can recognize it in someone else—though, by that point, they wouldn't really care anyway.

Personally, I prefer the idea of surrendering to God over "enlightenment," mostly because I haven't got a clue what enlightenment even is.
Someone who has surrendered is free from fear.

You can spot someone who has surrendered to God because they aren't out there trying to grab power over anyone else; their only real interest is helping other people find their own freedom.

bluemason3 said:Does this kind of spiritual "achievement" imply a psychopathic or manic level of fearlessness, or is it something more clinical, like Urbach–Wietheov disease? 😳

Fear is a vital survival mechanism, just like hunger. It exists because we need it to stay alive. Too little fear leads to dysfunction, much like chronic anxiety does, and a total absence of fear is usually a symptom of a very serious medical condition. Temporary modulation might be useful—like dosing soldiers to get them through a messy job—but as a permanent state, being fearless is both bad and dangerous.

That said, I’d say moderate (hypo)maniacs (there are certainly more intense, cult-driven manic types out there, though they probably lack the self-control required for high-level guru manipulation) and psychopaths tend to dominate the field of spiritual teachers. So, that’s likely what people mean.

Rachel Kern5 said:Exactly. But we’re talking about RATIONAL fear here. I mean, nobody in their right mind is going to stick their hand into a burning stove just for the hell of it. What the Chinese wrote about in the Tao te Ching focuses on those IRRATIONAL fears—the kind of irrationality that keeps unstable people, the self-proclaimed "panic artists," constantly spiraling. 🥱

bluemason3 said:Rational fear doesn't actually exist. Every emotion we feel is either hardwired from birth or some kind of conditioned, internalized instinctual reaction.

It’s entirely possible that whether a reaction is conditioned or just part of someone's nature, it ends up being more or less in sync with the circumstances they're actually living in.

It’s like training a dog. If you didn't socialize them properly when they were young, you're going to have a hell of a time trying to meet their needs once they've actually matured. It depends. Will I be getting an incredible guardian, an aggressive guard dog, or just a companion to hang out with? It really comes down to what we're looking for. You’re both going to run into trouble.
That’s just the nurture side of things. You also have to account for nature—how different breeds and individual dogs come with their own built-in predispositions, some strengths and some weaknesses. Then, you eventually run into those outliers we might call "broken," where their behavior—whether it's something they were born with or something they picked up along the way—is just wildly outside the norm for any reasonable context.

It’s the same story with people.

It’s not about logic. Nobody actually sits down when something happens to them, runs a bunch of mathematical models on their computer to project every possible outcome, and then decides which emotion to trigger by pressing an "emo button."
The whole point of an instinctive reaction is speed. In most real-life scenarios—especially considering the vast majority of our evolutionary history in the wild—acting fast is everything. It’s about outrunning a predator or landing a kill before it's too late. There isn't any room for deep analysis, overthinking, or logic in those moments. You just move.

If someone finds themselves having emotional reactions that are wildly out of sync with the current social climate—to the point where it’s actually causing problems—they have options. They can try working through it via therapy or lean on medication. Some things can be fully resolved, while others are simply impossible to fix entirely. For most people, it’s really just about finding a way to manage it to some degree.

It’s like training a dog again. If you have a decent trainer, they can sometimes nudge certain breed instincts in a different direction through good discipline, though it’s never a guaranteed fix. I’ve seen plenty of overconfident trainers take a completely broken dog and honestly believe that Caesarism works in real life just as smoothly as it does on some TV show.
In a week, the dog gets put down, and the guy who thinks he owns him ends up in a casket. On the bright side, he’ll probably stop acting like such an egoist after that—at least in front of the people he used to try so hard to impress. 😬

I don't really see how any of this connects to spirituality, to be honest. 🤔

Rational vs. Irrational Fears

Rachel Kern5 said:

Rational vs. Irrational Fears

http://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rational-vs-irrational-fears/

Paul Rogers94 said:Orson Welles’ radio drama sparked mass panic across the USA (1938)

Is this fear actually rational?

We see it happening every single day—someone threatens to slash your wages by a few bucks, or some politician starts fretting about Social Security funds, or whatever... and suddenly, the masses are ready to swallow any draconian law or extreme measure just to feel safe.
Whenever politicians want to pull a fast one, they start by weaponizing your sense of security and survival—hitting that primal herd instinct—and once you're rattled, they can push whatever agenda they want through.
Is that rational?
Do you really think people will agree to anything if you just convince them their existence is under threat? Regardless of whether the threat is even real...
That’s how a peaceful neighbor—a perfectly decent citizen—can snap and turn on their own, committing all those horrific things humans do to one another.
Essentially, it doesn't matter if the virus actually exists or if it's genuinely dangerous—the psychological impact is identical.

The awakened mind doesn't fall for that kind of panic. They don't go looking for reasons to be afraid; instead, they see that fear itself is what creates the reasons to be afraid.
The only thing worth fearing is fear itself.

Paul Rogers94 said:Orson Welles’ radio drama sparked mass panic across the USA (1938)

Is this fear actually rational?

We see it happening every single day—someone threatens to slash your wages by a few bucks, or some politician starts fretting about Social Security funds, or whatever... and suddenly, the masses are ready to swallow any draconian law or extreme measure just to feel safe.
Whenever politicians want to pull a fast one, they start by weaponizing your sense of security and survival—hitting that primal herd instinct—and once you're rattled, they can push whatever agenda they want through.
Is that rational?
Do you really think people will agree to anything if you just convince them their existence is under threat? Regardless of whether the threat is even real...
That’s how a peaceful neighbor—a perfectly decent citizen—can snap and turn on their own, committing all those horrific things humans do to one another.
Essentially, it doesn't matter if the virus actually exists or if it's genuinely dangerous—the psychological impact is identical.

The awakened mind doesn't fall for that kind of panic. They don't go looking for reasons to be afraid; instead, they see that fear itself is what creates the reasons to be afraid.
The only thing worth fearing is fear itself.

mistybison said:To be fully awakened would imply ceasing to be human altogether—becoming either an overman or something non-human. Such a spirituality would essentially be an escape from the humanity we know.

If we actually reach a state where we no longer experience fear—regardless of what happens to us or the world around us—our brain chemistry would have to be fundamentally altered, triggering a ripple effect across every aspect of our existence. We can't simply rewire the core settings of a human being by picking and choosing which traits to discard. If we eliminate something as foundational as fear, we trigger a domino effect with unpredictable consequences. Is irrational fearlessness really a goal worth pursuing? What if it leads to total numbness? If we stop valuing life, we risk becoming dangerous to ourselves and everyone else.

And is that even true spirituality?

Joseph Bailey41 said:Let’s switch things up for a second. Instead of just hyping each other up—which I love because we really get each other—let’s actually try to define what this whole "herd instinct" thing even means, and what a "herd" per se actually is. From what I see when I head down into the city, it doesn't look like a "herd" at all. It looks like a bunch of individual personas just wandering aimlessly, each playing their own little political game. It’s more like the chaotic movement of subatomic particles than some kind of organized super-organism.

Sure, right now they might all be sharing the same emotional state (and honestly, it's a vibe you can smell from blocks away, so I personally prefer keeping my distance), but in the grand scheme of things, it's all temporary and fleeting. If you were to ask any one of them what they're actually afraid of, they wouldn't even be able to put it into words... so by definition, this isn't fear, it's paranoia. That's why conspiracy theorists are having the time of their lives right now; they feel like pigs in mud because finally, other people are starting to "see" the Illuminati, the Masons, and whatever else they're obsessed with.

How do you teach a "herd" anything? You don't. You can't. Because a "herd" doesn't have reason, it can't remember, it can't learn, and it can't achieve insight. It doesn't even have an instinct, because that concept doesn't exist in this context; it's just a mental construct used by people who try to control others because they're lonely and empty inside. Reason—and even emotion, intuition, or instinct—is something possessed exclusively by individuals. You can only have a conversation with individuals; they are the only ones you can teach, and the only ones you can learn from. A herd (whether you call it a mass, a crowd, or just the unwashed masses) isn't a factor. It isn't a force of nature, and it isn't a conscious, active subject. It's nothing. It’s just a temporary mental illusion sustained only by "faith" in the concept itself—basically, by us accepting the terminology. It's a cheap magician's trick.

Paul Rogers94 said:Look, I never said any of that—not even close—but that’s how you read it, translated it, and filtered it through your own mindset.🥱

mistybison said:I don't agree that "fear itself is the only thing to fear." There are very real dangers out there where feeling fear is a perfectly natural response, and in those cases, one shouldn't ignore it.

Paul Rogers94 said:It’s fear itself that strips us of our rationality. It's what allows low-level clowns like Hitler and Stalin to manipulate millions... acting out of fear isn't rational. You can't be a rational actor while living in psychological bondage to fear. I won't argue just for the sake of arguing—I already covered that in my last post—but being fearless doesn't mean being a mindless idiot; quite the opposite. Fear is exactly what turns people into mindless idiots.
Just because someone's actions aren't driven by fear doesn't mean they'll go jumping out of a plane without a parachute.
Not being a slave to fear doesn't equate to having no brain.

Fear is a primal herd instinct—an unconscious drive for survival and continuity. It works fine for animals. However, when that herd instinct dominates a species that is supposed to be distinguished from animals by self-awareness, you end up with something that isn't fully human yet, but isn't quite an animal either. I call it "subhuman"—a transitional stage between animal and true human being. Only an individual can transcend this subhuman state to reach a true human state, where their life isn't dominated by basic animalistic herd instincts—that unconscious, animal fear. That is the only time one acts from reason rather than fear.

Acting rationally out of fear is impossible.

Joseph Bailey41 said:There you go again with this whole "herd instinct" thing. Fear is actually a natural reaction for any single animal (which, biologically speaking, includes us humans) when faced with immediate physical danger. The constant anxiety people deal with today is a completely different story—that’s the unnatural part, and it's actually harmful. What really eats away at your immune system is chronic stress, not that short-lived, animalistic fear response that most creatures simply shake off once the danger has passed.

mistybison said:I don't agree that "fear itself is the only thing to fear." There are very real dangers out there where feeling fear is a perfectly natural response, and in those cases, one shouldn't ignore it.