FLORIAN BADOR - Composer / Entrepreneur / Athlete

Florian Bador

Capitalism
Spirituality
Links
My Music
Photos
Quotes
 
Hi, this is my personal website and for now I will use it to describe who I am and most importantly share what I'm about and what I've learned about reality as you probably shouldn't care much about who I am ("Great minds discuss ideas, Average minds discuss events, Small minds discuss people." - Eleanor Roosevelt). In a few years I will turn it into a platform where I share my content (music videos and personal development) with the help of a full time staff. Until then it will remain this single basic page as I spend most of my time coding for my businesses.

Quick description of who I am, and some thoughts:

Capitalism

I absolutely love capitalism and want to explain this here because way too many people today have a negative view of it, usually because they don't even know what capitalism really is. They often confuse it with individualism, which is absurd because we cannot trade with ourselves. Capitalism and Individualism are therefore opposite.

THE ULTIMATE IDIOCY:

There is nothing more stupid than to have an opinion on something we fail to define and understand correctly. For example, if we picked 100 people in the street representing a perfect random sample of the population and asked them "What do you think of Scientology?" I am quite convinced over 90 of them would share very specific details about what they think of it. But if we then told them "We're writing a new simple encyclopedia, could you write a short paragraph explaining what Scientology is?" these same people would suddenly find themselves in trouble, completely unable to define clearly what it is. That is ultimate idiocy, yet asking people about capitalism would result in a similar experience. Millions of people dare to have a view point on minimum wage for example while never having opened a book on economics, so they fail to realize that raising minimum wage actually ends up hurting the poor the most (I added a paragraph below on minimum wage). I call that maximum stupidity. Personally I have absolutely no clue what Scientology is really about so I simply keep my position about it undefined in my mind because I do not need to have a view on everything. If I start dating a girl who is a Scientologist I will suddenly have the need to know, in which case I will go read a dozen books before finally formulating a point of view. Until then I will only keep a defined perspective for things I fully understand, like capitalism. If you want to learn what I've learned about it, this is why I am writing this.

BASIC ECONOMIC MECHANICS & HISTORY:

In order to understand capitalism we need to go back in history and understand how civilization evolved from growing our own food, making our own clothes and burying half of our kids, to massive abundance for ALL. Yes "ALL" because the poor of today would be considered wealthy in yesterday's standards, and I am not talking about currency devaluation but standard of living. Today's poor rarely starve when yesterday's average person starving was normal. Today's "poor" complain about their condition on social media using a smartphone more powerful than the computer that took us to the moon. I am not saying that any of this is perfectly fine, but that it should all be put into historical perspective to understand the whole picture about capitalism.
So we had to grow our own food, build everything we use, and by the end of the day no time was left for anything else than mere survival. Then came the specialization of labor which led us to trade. I grow wheat and you build horseshoes, so I can give you a bag of wheat in exchange for horseshoes that I can use for the horses of my field and we both win.
But now let's say that you want my wheat but I have enough horseshoes. I am however in need of some wooden tools for my field and you don't make those. Well, what if we could use some kind of token that allows me to get something from a third party instead of you? Not only that, it would also allow me to shift the transaction in time. And that's how gold and silver came along. I give you a bag of wheat in exchange for a piece of gold and I later give that piece of gold to John who makes wooden tools every day.
No one makes money as it is against the law. Today, only the central bank can make money. We can however circulate currency (tokens). Let's say you have $100 and give it to me in exchange for some wheat. I then give it to John for a wooden tool. John then gives it to you for horseshoes. We could keep doing this 500 times in a single month and each of us would have earned $50K and benefited from great abundance. Yet, there was only $100 in existence. Too many people have this very flawed impression that when someone else has the money there is less for them. This illusion of scarcity is due to the fact that most people never studied economics. As the same $100 bill circulates (and that nobody is "making" money) there is greater abundance for all.
So the beauty of this circulation of tokens is not only that we can suddenly have access to everyone's stuff and choose when (therefore solving problems such as perishability) but since everyone now specializes in doing one thing they each start to do it very well. As a result, the whole of civilization benefits from not only more abundance but also more excellence. Everything becomes better in a self-reinforcing pattern that never ends. Compare anything to what it was only 20 years ago and you can see this everywhere.
I saw a homeless van in Venice Beach that had a professionally printed sign covering the entire windshield, it read "CANCEL BILLIONAIRES". You can tell for sure this person never studied economics, yet the public library was a few blocks away. They chose to pay for a sign instead. Had they gone to the library and picked the right books for free they would understand how a billionaire only became a billionaire because they figured out a way to circulate a lot of tokens (the same ones over and over) by providing massive value to civilization at massive scale, improving EVERYONE's life in the process. I thought this was a great metaphor for his life, his own complaining and acting like a victim prevents him from seeing where he is going. Yet, this complaining can only look very professional because others worked to make a printing business possible, from every part of the printer to the person who bought that printer and specialized in using it. They may have even gotten a loan for that printer because someone believed in them. All of this absolutely BEAUTIFUL.
I'd like to make it clear that I never resented capitalism even when I was broke, and I've been far more broke than most. Instead, I DECIDED to read the books and make my best to understand the world. I knew there was something wrong with what *I* was doing, not the system. Victimhood is a choice, so is growth.
Now, John starts getting a bit complacent about his wooden tools. It's human nature to start slacking off when things do well and push harder when they don't (in fact this is exactly why we have economic/debt cycles). As a result of John's complacency what used to make my life easier is no longer that great relatively to the new standards of living. Fortunately Matt also makes wooden tools and I find them better so I now trade the gold with Matt and my life continues to improve. Pretty soon, John's life is not doing as good as it used to, so he stops slacking off and keeps improving himself again like he used to. Both Matt and John keep getting better in a never-ending reinforcing cycle that benefits the whole civilization because wooden tools are now getting really amazing. Capitalism forces people into excellence, which therefore lifts the whole world upwards.

WHAT IS A CAPITALIST, WHAT IS A SOCIALIST?

A capitalist is a person who understands the way these mechanics work and likes it this way. They believe in non-interference with these natural principles.
There are only three cases of people who don't like capitalism:
1. Those who prefer to complain than to specialize and create (the lazy). A dream life for them would be to lay on the beach every day with beers and create nothing.
2. Those who haven't studied economic history, or from the wrong people (the ignorant), not realizing that even if they are lazy they are still slowly benefiting from capitalism.
3. Those who fall into both 1. and 2.
Most people who dislike capitalism (typically socialists) fall into the 3rd category, being usually both lazy and ignorant because laziness leads to ignorance since no one was born with historical knowledge. Their ignorance prevents them from having any sense of perspective and understanding of how we got here as a civilization and how life was before. Since victimhood is easier than taking responsibility they blame the system, a system that has proven to work very well throughout history. They are pissed at the system because they never made the decision and effort to learn it, this is why ignorance is piss.
A socialist is a person who believes in interfering with the way value is exchanged through civilization by forcing it to go where it would not naturally go otherwise.

WHY CAPITALISM DOES GOOD WHILE CHARITY AND SOCIALISM CAN HURT:

Unfortunately, although socialism may look like a good idea at first, history has proven that this does not work, or not for long because the most optimized system is one where value flows naturally with the least interference (taxes are interferences). This is not an opinion, this is what we learn if we study economic mechanics objectively. For that reason you will rarely find a socialist who studied economics, or they would have to be extra lazy and selfish to compensate for their understanding of the fact that socialism always ends up breaking this beautifully oiled machine that makes us all prosper, and pretty soon the whole of civilization stops making any progress. In fact, socialism usually ends up dragging down everyone's living standards lower than they were initially. After all, why would John improve himself and therefore civilization as a whole if he is not rewarded for it? His complacency is guaranteed to kick-in again.
The reason why socialism cannot work is the same as why a rich kid who was given everything is sure to be spoiled and weak, and history has shown that weak people create a world no one wants to live in. At first it seems like love to give that child everything, but on the long term we realize it is in fact a curse. Socialism works exactly the same way, it is an instant-gratification approach which by very nature carries the seeds of its inevitable upcoming fall. Everything about economic mechanics comes from human nature. Besides selected books, one of the ways to study economics is to carefully observe human nature.
The beautiful paradox of capitalism is that by allowing the individual to use personal gain as original motivation they end up bringing prosperity to all. This is simply because we cannot trade with ourselves and we cannot force someone to buy, so the only way to circulate currency is to provide value for someone else as determined by their own needs, not ours. This is called the "Invisible Hand" principle. Capitalism is one for all, but indirectly and naturally.
The naivety of socialism on the other hand is that by supposedly wishing to help the individual in an all-for-one direct and unnatural fashion we break the whole machine that made it all work in the first place, dragging down the living standards of the entire civilization, the one individual included.
In the end, socialism is a shortsighted perspective while capitalism respects the natural laws of human nature regarding global prosperity. Everywhere capitalism has been prosperity followed. Everywhere socialism has been declined followed. This is precisely why China has moved away from misery and now entered an era of great abundance that will most likely surpass the US by far and become the new greatest power (as Americans got complacent just like John while Wang was hungry for more). That is the crazy story of a communist government that was intelligent enough to make room for a capitalistic economy, such a strange combination.
We may wonder then who among a capitalist and a socialist is most selfish after all. This reality is usually the opposite of what most people are tempted to believe, as they confuse capitalism with individualism. But again, these people typically never studied economic history, they're too busy blaming the system and complaining.
The reality is that a good business is the greatest charity imaginable because it is sustained by the natural circulation of tokens through some kind of value provided to others as determined by their own needs. A traditional charity on the other hand is NOT sustainable since it will always depend on someone responding to one's begging for tokens for no value provided to them in return. A traditional charity depends on someone else having figured out a way to provide REAL value to civilization, and as it begs them for tokens it slows down their progress, and therefore the world's progress. Claiming something has value based on our own perspective forced into the world without it being backed by demand from others is not REAL value, in fact it is borderline selfish. I am not saying that we shouldn't give to charity of course, but that we should give while fully understanding what is really happening when this transfer of tokens takes place.

NATURE & DOWNSIDES OF CAPITALISM:

There are very few cases where restrictions should be put in place (forced) for the greater good. For example, a business may cut down trees or spill oil in the ocean while responding to the growing demand of civilization. Another might take advantage of human weakness (instant gratification of the uneducated crowd) by creating addictive pharmaceuticals and promoting them to millions of doctors, or by offering over-leveraged loans to the naive and financially dumb person who thinks value can be created without productivity, or by modifying the seeds of Nature in a shortsighted way. These however are rare exceptions that are too often used to misrepresent capitalism when the real thing to blame is simply instant gratification. Many people like to generalize this misrepresentation because it supports their victim-story of the "Evil Capitalist" (victimhood is an easy form of instant gratification, the delayed gratification equivalent would be to take responsibility). So while capitalism has a few downsides due to the instant gratification tendencies of the spiritually asleep person, socialism on the other hand is fully based on instant gratification: "Let's distribute money right now without any productivity!" (typically through debt and/or printing money which is the same thing, a debt on the future value of a currency).
One of the fundamental principles of economics is that the only real value is productivity, everything else is an illusion, and an illusion cannot be sustained forever. This is why the GDP is such an important metric that we often use as a denominator to something else in order to measure the ratio of that other thing relatively to what is REAL. Just like countries have a GDP, we all have our own personal GDP and the P is the key to all growth. Without P the individual declines and the same is true for an entire country.
Another downside of capitalism is that, since the poorest are generally also the most ignorant because lack of self-discipline is the main cause of long-term poverty and that undisciplined people rarely read, this ignorance leads to an illusion of decline. Capitalism improves the quality of life of the poor on the long term in absolute terms, but relatively to the richest they tend to appear and feel poorer which leads to resentment and therefore conflicts. In other words the richest and the poorest both grow thanks to capitalism, but the richest (the disciplined ones) grow much faster, increasing the wealth gap and giving the illusion of more poverty. Failure to study economic history is the main cause of this false belief.

STOCK MARKET / INVESTMENT:

When the Dutch invented the stock market they took capitalism to a whole new level. From then on you could invest the fruit of your labor for compounded growth by investing into someone else's labor, distributing this fruit into businesses you didn't even have to build nor visit. So John and Matt decided to join forces and create a wooden tools business that will create tools no one has ever seen before, improving the life of thousands of farmers. Fifty people heard of their idea, believed in it and decided to lend Matt and John some tokens in exchange for 1% ownership, leaving John and Matt with 25% each. As they now build tools they could have never built alone, they not only improve civilization, but their own living standards as well as the standards of each of the fifty owners who now share a piece of the reward. The value these people brought was belief. This is what an investor is, someone who brings value to civilization in a very strange way, with mere strategical belief in someone else. Capitalism leads to synergy which brings abundance for all.
Of course many people will lose while investing but capitalism is not to blame, ignorance, failing to study economic history, and instant gratification are the causes as always.

THE POOR:

Now, let's say that Joe is the laziest human being alive. Joe did not improve himself, never specialized into anything, wakes up late every day and complains about the system with his buddies at the sports bar where he knows everything about the latest fighter but nothing about himself. Joe missed almost all the opportunities offered by capitalism, except for one thing: Joe now lives in a world that is A LOT more abundant with much higher living standards. He now rides on roads he didn't have to build, others built them for him while he was sleeping. He eats a diversity of foods he didn't have to grow and wears good clothes he didn't have to make. As a result of his lack of specialization he circulates very little value, but the little he circulates gives him access to so much more he could have had before. Totally ignorant of what happened, he acts like a victim on social media, complaining about capitalism while typing on a supercomputer from 30 years prior that used to take an entire room and now fits in pockets he didn't have to invent.
I don't like Joe but he should like me.

MINIMUM WAGE:

Someone recently asked me to explain the minimum wage problem, so I thought I would copy that and add it here for anyone interested.
The minimum wage is probably one of the most counter-intuitive concepts of economics. Another one would be import taxes to supposedly protect local manufacturing while this in fact hurts the whole economy and therefore the individual manufacturer (Adam Smith explained this very well 250 years ago, yet many policy makers still don't get it).
So here's what happens when we force a minimum wage (or raise it).
1. The price of all products involving minimum wage workers increases, and who consumes these? Everyone, except that for the poor this represents a very high proportion of their expenses (e.g. groceries) while for the rich it is very negligible since luxuries are rarely affected by minimum wages (think Walmart vs Jewelry, who buys those in proportion to their income?).
2. There are many poor people who are not on minimum wage, and this is increasingly true with modern self-employment. The freelancer who has a very hard time finding contracts may charge a decent fee but if they don't find enough contracts they will be very poor and the minimum wage does nothing for these people (while the other points I mention here still affect them negatively). I used to be one of these people because I was excellent at coding and terrible at selling myself. I solved that problem by creating my own businesses so that my extremely high standards can be put to use without having my face on the services (no one would buy if I started opening my mouth, even though they logically should).
3. All businesses who hire minimum wage workers have no choice but to either hire fewer people or drop their level of productivity, usually a combination of both. Hiring fewer people means rising unemployment, of who? These poor people the minimum wage was supposed to help. And dropping productivity means slowing down the entire economy.
This last piece is HUGELY important because in order to do well we first need to be in a country that does well, and as I mentioned earlier productivity is the only thing real. Being poor in the US is a very different thing than being poor in India. As the whole economy slows down (which really just means that the currency changes hands slower as I explained earlier with tokens and the same $100 bill) the living standards of the entire population drop, and who feels this the most? The poor. How naive it is to think we can simply force one part of a whole machine artificially without affecting the other parts and breaking that machine.
I could go much more into details but these are the basics of what actually happens with minimum wage. This is again a classic of ignorance. Many people dare to have an opinion on a subject they never studied, and the greater their intentions the worse the results since they will bring even more passion into the defense of an idea that seems attractive at first but is completely wrong and harmful in reality.

LOGIC vs EMOTION:

Capitalism vs socialism often comes down to logic vs emotion. Many people who think purely emotionally will tend to like socialism because they cannot see how this completely fails in the practical context of physical reality. Only a person who learned rationality (a somewhat unnatural trait) will be able to take in consideration not only the attractiveness of an idea but also its practicality. In this context it means its consistency with the laws of economics just like there are laws of physics. A socialist is too often like a person who doesn't believe in gravity saying "If I believe enough with a good heart I can jump off this cliff and I will fly", then calling you heartless for disagreeing. Only practical Dreamers leave the world better, naive and ignorant ones make it worse. The truth is that gravity doesn't care how we feel about it, it simply IS.
Like one of my beautiful T-shirts says, the greatest headache is trying to explain basic economic principles to socialists.
For that reason you will rarely see a rational socialist. In fact, political statistics show a much higher percentage of left wing among women than men. I would certainly not equate capitalism to right wing but there is an obvious correlation since a capitalist will have a hard time with the typical "logic" of the left. This gender disparity is due to the fact that women carry the child and no man can compete with this, it naturally wires women for emotional thinking. This is the same reason why so few women succeed in business, it has little to do with social inequality and everything to do with the fact that succeeding in business is only possible for the few who understand that reality does not care how we feel about an idea but only about whether the idea actually works in practice. Reality never discriminates, it does not know who is behind an action. Truly powerful is the person who can alternate on demand between emotional thinking (which almost everyone has naturally and is necessary for creativity) and rational thinking (necessary for manifesting this creativity into its physical equivalent). These people are the ones to bring heaven on earth because they simultaneously have their head in the sky and their feet on earth. Like everything else, this stretch requires intensionality and WORK.

LEARN MORE:

If you are interested in learning more about economics and history I would recommend two books:
• An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, BUT I have to warn you that this is the hardest book I have ever read. See my review on GoodReads to understand why. So I highly recommend that you find a great summary of it instead. This book from 250 years ago is considered by most as the greatest classic of economics ever written.
• The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, except that Matt has a strong and unfortunate oil-bias as well as a liking for GMO that should be ignored IMO (see my review on GoodReads).
• Ah, and you may want to check out My new collection of T-shirts that I consider the most appropriate for our time and now wear daily everywhere.

Spirituality

I was raised atheist in France (equivalent to the "New York atheist"). Around 25 I had an instant awakening. I lived in Montreal near the St Joseph oratory and often used the stairs of this largest church in Canada to workout. One day I heard there were escalators inside to reach the top because of the scale of the place. Curious to find out what escalators in a church look like I went in for the first time with a tourist spirit and found myself completely alone in the gigantic basilica. I had a very powerful encounter with Silence that changed me forever. From then on I went back every day and made sure to look at the mass schedule in order to avoid them so I can see Her again.
When I moved to Los Angeles I looked for a church that was open all day so I can continue my practice of visiting Her (or allowing Her to visit me) outside of the schedule of a clergy. I knew She would be there too. I found one and sure enough, She was there.
Some time passed and one day I accidentally went during a mass. I got introduced to some young adults group and before I know it I was part of a Catholic church, organizing events, mixing the live music for them, singing in the choir, and so on.
I never understood that a priest can eat meat, therefore killing perfectly innocent breathing creations of God (or paying someone else to do it for them). I knew since my encounter with Silence that this was highly incompatible with an awaken spiritual state. This should have been an obvious sign of drowsiness but I remained asleep with them for 5 years until one day I finally woke up. I was in the choir and we started the mass the way we always do, saying "Let's acknowledge our sins". I looked around and started laughing, laughing at myself for having fallen asleep for so long. I left and never went back.
After 5 years asleep I could finally see clear again. I remember some church retreats where we would spend our time dwelling on how "weak and broken" we are... and I thought "But I'm not, 'cause I'm a bad mofo who was born for greatness". Had I said this out loud they would have mistaken this as arrogance, not realizing that they were, too. No one was born to live a small life and simply "make it through the struggle"... Failing to realize this is not humility, it's being spiritually asleep, a zombie soul floating around unconscious of its own nature. Like Michael Beckwith says, we were not born in sin, we were born in bliss.
On top of this dogmatic thing about misery and brokenness is the fact that my generation is the weakest of all times. The average westerner of my generation grew up in massive abundance and is massively weak as a result. So whatever they call struggle is often laughable when put into perspective. For that reason I'm usually bored with the average westerner, I find weak people boring, even annoying in fact as they respond "OMG!" to a broken bone and surf this kind of "struggles" until they become their dominant thoughts and conversations so that their whole life becomes about these small pointless things that do not lead to growth. Once in a while I meet someone who grew up in communism or war, got through all sorts of TRUE tragedies, yet they don't even call them struggles, they call it life, they simply shut up and grow. I tend to connect well with these people, they are the strong ones. Blessed are the badass for they shall leave the world different than they found it while everybody else remains a mere tourist on a tour of this incarnation as a passive commentator.
So I managed to wake up from the dogmatic practices because I was still an outsider, but I knew that after having been hypnotized like the dogs of Pavlov by the clergy for generations to make of their spiritual practice a science of sins and smallness, an art of misery and struggles, they had no chance of ever waking up, short of an exceptional miracle. Such miracles do happen but they are very rare, most people simply stay asleep their whole life.
The clergy was founded a couple of centuries after Jesus had already left, and it was one with the state. No man of state ever had any interest in people's spirituality, or a higher Freedom for them which can only be attained through mysticism. Their interest has always been the mere avoidance of social chaos. This is why all religions are loaded with rituals, clerical doctrines, and lack any profound mysticism. You will not hear Luke 17:20 in a church because the words of Jesus have been filtered for crowd CONTROL. I did not want my spirituality to remain at the level of morality and rules of good conduct, and I knew since my encounter with Silence that there was something far beyond that. Or in the beautiful words of Lao Tzu from the Tao Te Ching verse 38:
"A foolish man tries to be good, and is therefore not good [...]
  When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
  When goodness is lost, there is morality.
  When morality is lost, there is ritual.
  Ritual is the husk of true faith, the beginning of chaos."
This is precisely why, ironically, religions have brought a lot of chaos into this world. They try too hard, and they try in the wrong direction, one that is away from mysticism and therefore bounded by society.
So I returned to Silence just like in "The Alchemist" and I could now practice the remembering of my spiritual nature just as well in a synagogue as in a mosque or a church, but I would prefer a quiet forest where I am more likely to see a burning bush. Just like Rilke wrote in The Book of Hours, "I don't want to think a place for you. Speak to me from everywhere.". Or if you prefer it from Jesus in the gospel of Thomas, "Cut wood and I am here. Lift a stone and you will find me.".
Lastly, I found that far too many people in "spiritual" communities forget that all their visualizing, contemplating, meditating and praying (which usually means begging a judge in the sky to do things for them) means strictly nothing without action, and that this level of action should be aggressive and radical. I never found an absolute maniac in a spiritual community but I saw a lot of people doing everything at very shallow levels. These people need a Navy SEAL more than they need a priest. When I heard Grant Cardone say "My prayer is action" I knew this was Truth, just like when I've read Rilke say "Only in our doing can we grasp You. Only with our hands can we illumine You.". I do meditate, visualize and dive into contemplative introspection daily, but I make my very best to keep these negligible when compared to how aggressive the level of action I take. Or to put it another way I would say... Ask not what your God can do for you, ask what you can do for your God (and not small things with great love to make sense of doing less, great things with great love to express Her fully through our unlimited potential).
I remember a retreat I did with this young adults group where we were given a small mirror to stare into for 5 minutes as a first exercise to kick off the retreat. After 5 minutes I looked up and could not believe my eyes. I saw the saddest thing I have ever seen in my whole life: at least half of the people were crying. I did not know why back then but years later I understood precisely why they could not even stare in the mirror for 5 minutes without crying. The reason is that self-esteem works the same way we esteem another person. Imagine if someone told you "Tomorrow I'm going to do this for you" and the next day they don't. Then the following week they say they will show up at 3.30pm but they come at 3.45. The week after that they actually show up on time but the next one they don't. How would be your level of respect/esteem for this person? So their miserable self-esteem simply came from a place no one likes to talk about, something that is the raw truth... Not pushing themselves enough and following through. This is the only way to truly feel alive. The problem is that this is not something they teach in a church, in fact the influence clearly goes the opposite direction, "Be kind with yourself" and so on they say. This type of "kindness" is in reality very unkind as pushing ourselves is the kindest thing we can do to ourselves. Saying "Tomorrow morning I'm going to wake up early and run" and ACTUALLY DO IT. After compounding this for years we look into the mirror with a big smile.
I found that people from such communities have a definition of the word kindness that is usually synonymous with instant gratification. To me the kindest thing is the Truth, because the truth will set me free while the pretty words won't. For example, let's say that someone is fat and keeps eating junk food (no priest should be fat, this also makes no sense) nine friends don't say anything but one comes forward to say it. Which one is kind? I would personally instantly hate the nine and love that one who came to me telling me the Truth that could set me free. These nine who knew were too weak to be TRULY Kind while that one was courageous enough to do the right thing with a Love of a much higher level, a sacrificial selfless one. The modern "kindness" most of these people practice is often not only weak but also selfish since it values being liked by others. Or in the words of Emerson, "God's work will not be made manifest by cowards". In most "spiritual" circles the vast majority of people are very "kind" cowards, because again, they try very hard to be good and therefore aren't.
The most spiritually awaken people are usually the furthest away from the status quo, not because they try to as a reaction to it (that's weakness), but simply because the high level of Freedom at which they live naturally distances them from the place where everybody else had fallen asleep, commonly called "The world". Let's face it, most people are not happy, they're quite miserable in fact, they are not fit either, not wealthy, not at peace at all either, not anything truly great in most areas of life and this can only mean one thing: The status quo must be wrong. For that reason, being an independent thinker is probably the most important trait of all for spiritual awakening, and we don't find that in a dogmatic place by definition.
You may want to watch the movie "A Hidden Life" by Terrence Malick to understand what I mean when I use the word Freedom. It's not the entitled freedom of Venice Beach to "do whatever I want" and try to look important in a society that has fallen deep into over-permissiveness and victimhood, it's one of a very unique kind that this favorite movie of mine illustrates like nothing else I have seen. Let me give you the best line of the movie, one that made me both smile and cry at the same time: "Sign here and you'll go free" > "But I'm already Free". Franz Jagerstatter was no doubt a great independent thinker.
Please do not write to me to debate about spiritual views. I will not answer (these arguments never lead anywhere). Thanks!

MUSIC

2022 : new music "Amniotic Tone" coming later this year.
2021-08 Diary of the Stars
2020-08 B-612
2019-06 Birth of the Solar System
2019-04 Draw Me a Sheep
2019-01 Medley of 2018 Songs
2018-10 Ibiza
2018-08 Funky Improv
2018-03 Ey Yoga Mat!
2018-01 "Extended" version of The Flight of the Dove (the piano-splits video)
2015 Hymn to Grandpa (orchestra)
2015 The Flight of the Dove (orchestra)
2012 Solemn Lullaby (orchestra)

FAVORITE QUOTES

"Almost everything comes down to instant gratification versus delayed gratification, in other words brain versus spirit. We take the marshmallow test every second of our lives." - Florian Bador :)
I believe in this so much that I intentionally made it everything that I'm about. I wired my brain over the years to identify instant gratification as the ultimate enemy in every situation, and the people who promote it are very unwelcome. They usually do so to feel better about themselves having sold their soul to it, if only we could join them... but I never will.
 
"Sign here and you'll go free" > "But I'm already Free" - Franz Jagerstatter in the movie "A Hidden Life" by Terrence Malick, possibly my favorite movie of all times. Once in a few millions comes someone who chooses to embrace a level of Freedom of extreme purity, and I'm in love with these people. They are free from the mind of society and one with Truth. I see these people as the ultimate role models.
"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once." - Shakespeare
"God made man because God loves stories." - Elie Wiesel
"You were not born in sin, you were born in bliss." - Michael Beckwith
"We don't need spiritual followers, we need spiritual leaders." - Michael Beckwith
"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." - Emerson (Self-Reliance)
 
"God's work will not be made manifest by cowards." - Emerson
"Only in our doing can we grasp You. Only with our hands can we illumine You." - Rilke (The Book Of Hours)
"My prayer is action." - Grant Cardone
"Don't let your learning turn into knowledge or you will become a fool, let your learning turn into action so you can become wealthy." - Jim Rohn
 
"To really feel alive, you've got to fu**ing push yourself. That's just the way of things." - Tom Bilyeu
"There are a lot of people in mediocrity who have a nice resume, but they're one-timers." - David Goggins
"^$#**ck&~* f%}^?#** {@$$^#*!!!" - David Goggins (any good swearing by David Goggins sounds like poetry to me)
 
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw
"Life is short, so remember to be super serious, take everything personally and be outraged on a daily basis." - Chad Hurley
"Some men see things as they are and say why, I Dream things that never were and say why not" - George Bernard Shaw
"Walk by faith, not by sight" - John
 
"The kingdom of God will not appear in visible signs, nor shall people say Lo Here! or Lo There! because behold, the kingdom of God is within you." - Jesus (Luke 17:20)
"Cut wood and I am here. Lift a stone and you will find me." - Jesus (Gospel of Thomas)
"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." - Blaise Pascal
"Do you want a drink?" someone asked - "I'm making my own" replied Deepak Chopra (meaning from within as opposed to desperately trying to change ourselves from without like most people do)
"Wherever you are, be there."
 
"You must make your future Dream a present fact by assuming the feeling of your wish fulfilled" - Neville (The Power Of Awareness)
"Conquer the mind and you conquer the world."
 
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble, it's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain
 
"Great minds discuss ideas, Average minds discuss events, Small minds discuss people." - Eleanor Roosevelt
 
"Mastery is being brilliant at the basics."
"People are rewarded in public for what they've practiced for years in private." - Tony Robbins
"Losers react, Winners anticipate." - Tony Robbins
"Good times create weak people, weak people create bad times, bad times create strong people, and strong people create good times." - Tony Robbins summarizing the book The Fourth Turning (which I don't really recommend - see my review on GoodReads)
 
"Broke people are selfish." - Grant Cardone.
"Find out what poor people read and don't read it." - Jim Rohn
 
This story of the farmer and good news/bad news.