When starting a new endeavor on or off the path, it is crucial to look forward and see where the path will take you, as far as your eyes and interpretation will allow. Every path is shrouded by some amount of fog, so it can be difficult or impossible to see where some paths will take you. Regardless, you must try to envision where a path will take you.
Some paths you can see to the end of, and if you can see the end, you can determine whether or not it is worth going. It is crucial to think this through before embarking on a journey that may or may not serve your pursuit of fulfillment.
Understand that the path of pleasure, off the path to mastery, goes nowhere, because there is no path of pleasure. There is only the pit of pleasure. The pit is dug by the pursuit of pleasure; the more one digs, the harder it is to climb out. Addiction is the depths of the pursuit of pleasure. This is why hardcore addicts can’t see living any other way.
You can become addicted to any pleasure.
Any path to mastery is a worthy endeavor, because mastery is transferable. However, the best paths for you are the ones that call to your spirit the loudest. There is no science to determine this; there is only faith. Before you embark on a path to mastery, think about where it will take you. Look where the path has taken others.
Below are paths that should be considered before they are walked down.
Entertainment
As entertainment has no path to mastery, nor any applicable wisdom contained within it, all paths of entertainment must be evaluated for the time it will take to complete these paths, if they can be completed at all.
Some doors are better off never opened. For example, if you haven’t made a TikTok account, it may be wise to keep that door closed. You can never complete or finish TikTok. Pertaining to the length of human life, TikTok is an infinite void where human life goes to rot.
Entertainment is fine if used properly. Entertainment can be harmful to fulfillment if entertainment is pursued instead of being used as a respite from the hardship of the path.
TV shows and video games are good examples of fruitless paths that must be considered before being walked down. Movies are self-contained, but a series is a journey that may not be worth going down.
Lengths of Full TV Shows:
- Game of Thrones | 72 hours | 3 Days 12 minutes nonstop viewing
- The Walking Dead | 130 hours | 5 days, 10 hours, 27 minutes nonstop viewing
- Dragon Ball Z | 116.4 hours | 4 days, 20 hours, 24 minutes
- One Piece | 468 hours | 19 days, 12 hours
Lengths of Full Video Games:
- Baldur’s Gate 3 | 115 Hours
- Stardew Valley | 95 hours
- Red Dead Redemption 2 | 85 hours
- Counter-Strike/Call of Duty/Battlefield | Unlimited hours
Entertainment is not bad, as long as it is not pursued. Do not pursue beating a game or finishing a show, enjoy the game and let it recharge and inspire you, so you may pursue mastery on the path once recharged. Take lessons from stories and use them to drive you forward, but always be able to walk away.
Be cautious of paths that do not have ends pertaining to entertainment. You can walk them for hundreds or even thousands of hours, pursuing fulfillment from a path that cannot give it to you.
Entertainment paths with no end:
- Social media
- Online games that cannot be beaten
- App games that cannot be beaten
Once you walk through a certain doorway, it can be difficult to walk your way out.
relationships
Who you date or marry matters, and it can matter even more than the profession you choose.
A worthy relationship is one that pushes you to pursue greater levels of mastery, not keep you away from it. This goes for both individuals. A relationship must push you to bloom, not decay.
A boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife who demands to be pursued when you are on the path will keep you away from fulfillment and mastery. You cannot pursue others or live through them–there is no path to fulfillment in another, but there is a path to mastery in a relationship with two people who are in pursuit of strengthening their bond, while strengthening themselves.
Question an intimate relationship if it moves you farther away from your goals. Believe in an intimate relationship if it moves you closer to your goals.
Friendships
Friendships are no different than romantic relationships–spiritually, not physically.
Like intimate relationships, your friends should push you to achieve greater levels of mastery. Your friends should walk the same, or complementary paths to yours, so you may have alignment on a path and walk the journey together.
This isn’t to say that you can only be friends with others who are pursuing mastery in the same sports that you are; but if you are pursuing mastery over football, and your friend is pursuing the pleasure of partying(instead of occasional partying as a respite from mastery), while encouraging you to pursue mastery less and pursue pleasure more, your “friend” is leading you away from the light and into the dark pits of the pursuit of pleasure.
You want friends who encourage your growth. Friends that hold you back are crabs in a bucket that don’t want to be left behind. Crabs that don’t want to be left behind sabotage crabs that want to leave the bucket. This has been true since early hominids.
Even if your success would be shared and lift everyone up, a crab-friend will sabotage both of you so you don’t leave the bucket, like the scorpion who stings the frog halfway across the river, because that’s what scorpions do.
If you’re becoming friends with someone who has no path, who pursues pleasure, it is crucial to understand that they will become baggage you carry down your paths. There is no other outcome. Instead of carrying them around while your progress is slowed, it may be wise not to carry them at all. This doesn’t mean you abandon your friends, although it can; show your pathless friends The Way by encouraging them to take baby steps down paths of their own.
If you care about your friends, you must encourage them to pursue mastery, not pleasure.
Be cautious of nice people with no direction who want to enter your life. Sometimes you can show people The Way, but it’s up to them to walk their paths; you cannot walk the path for them. The time you may need to carry someone while they look for their paths or pursue pleasure could be a lifetime; hence the need to consider what should not be started.
Understand that it is easier to mold the youth than it is to remold the mature, but adults can rebuild themselves if they will it to be so. Lost adults may not have much will left. Although this depends, because people can change anything at anytime they want to. But the deeper one has dug their pit of pleasure, the harder it is to see the light outside of the pit, if they can see a glimmer of light at all.
Substances of pleasure
Trying a substance of pleasure just once may, not always, but may create a lifetime of pursuing it, a lifetime of addiction. This depends on individual circumstances like genetics, experience, etc.
If you have a family background of early death due to alcoholism, it may be wise to never try alcohol–not even a drop. The individual must make this decision. Alcohol is legal, but it is still addictive to certain people, although less addictive in theory than illegal drugs like heroin or meth. Some people can drink without ever feeling pulled to pursue alcohol.
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It is crucial to understand yourself so you may serve yourself best.
Some laws are just, and others are not; it has been this way since law was created when the universe was born, and possibly before that.
Some laws must be broken, and other laws you may break because of your desires, and this can be a good or bad thing depending on the reason for breaking the law. Meth is illegal, but so are psilocybin mushrooms, which can be beneficial medicine for some individuals. For others, mushrooms can destroy their lives. This is true.
It is crucial to pursue understanding of yourself so you may understand which substances, if any at all, are beneficial to your pursuits of mastery, and which take you off the path and into the pits of pleasure and Hell on Earth.
Training programs/education
Training programs and education refers to paths. Being a master of a path that has no use is use-less.
The available paths to mastery change from generation to generation; you can pursue a path to mastery from the past, but be cautious with this, as modern people value modern masteries, where masteries from the past tend to become niche and competitive curiosities.
Be cautious of the offer of mastery for a modern-created path that isn’t fully integrated into culture. People have worked on computers, been electricians, interpreted and argued the law, made entertainment, for over 50 years. Some of these have existed for over 1,000 years. If a path to mastery presents itself that was created in the modern time and is not at least 20 years old, it may expire in that same era, if it lasts that long at all.
Potential examples:
- Metaverse
- Gender studies
- NFTs
Be cautious of paths that need to be walked a strenuous distance before they pay off in any way at all. Other paths may reap benefits in a beginner or intermediate stage; these are valuable because, if later on you learn this path does not resonate with your spirit or no longer serves you, you may find a new path and bring experience from your last path.
An example is licensed Expertise professions: Doctor, Psychologist, Lawyer, Pilots, or any of the trades; you have to go all the way. You cannot go and find work as an almost doctor.
Paths pick you up and put you somewhere else sometime in the future. Consider paths carefully before committing yourself.
Meditate on where paths lead before you start them.
