I'm exactly the same. I get in the zone everyday, and 10-12 hours usually blows by like it's nothing. Glad I have a job where there's always (fun) development work to do...I don't understand how 6 hours a day could ever be enough though

All you did there was prove your assumption. You assumed spacetime, then you assumed it to be a thing-in-itself (which, by the way, is an IDEA) and then noticed it has certain properties as described by various theories (such as from Schwarzild). None of this is evidence that space or time - which, by the way, I DARE you to define - are properties of some world independent of consciousness (the witness/observer), your just merely asserting them. You can say they are empirical (or phenomenological) facts, but that is much different than saying they are things-in-themselves

OK, how's this: spacetime is the thing described by general relativity with no matter terms, full stop.

And I wish religious zealots would be banned in the comments section as well.

Right. And of course you have countries like Chile, which has the highest GDP per capita of any south american country and probably the most stable economy, all after adopting free market principals from Friedman. And some of these countries have grown, but to what extent? Where would Brazil be if it dropped it's insanely regulated state and bloated beauracracy and freed up its people? These countries are all still held back by their overbearing governments.

Chile is a terrible example of this; it has one of the higher levels of income inequality on that side of the continent and privatized education and health care. Private education in Chile is appalling; wealthy Chileans send their kids to study to the US or EU and the middle class that can't afford education sends them to Argentina or Brazil. Capital is concentrated on a few hands with a strong dependency on basic commodities exports with low added value. It's better than many places, but the GDP figures don't reflect the realities of a substantial amount of its population.

Are you just making stuff up? Chile has a public education system with voucher options, but almost all of the schools are publicly funded with voucher options, and even the private ones get government subisdies. And health care is a mix of public and private (like most countries) and free if you are over 60 or make a low income. So I think you are going to need to elaborate on those points a bit more

This "inequality" stuff is really getting annoying. The poor in Chile are far better off than other countries in the region, but because the rich are also richer somehow inequality is all that matters to some.

In fact, the wikipedia article "Poverty in South America" doesn't even mention Chile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_South_America

If the poor can't afford basic health care then there is something really wrong with an economy.

I'll give you Chile as a counterexample, although it's not as recent as the others.

This is incredibly well articulated. Fear is the number one issue to overcome for most people, not how to construct their presentation. If you have A LOT of fear going into speaking, this is the essential blockage which must be understood and overcome before anything meaningful can proceed. There are a lot of patterns of thought that go into the construction of a phobia-level fear of speaking which might be so strongly habituated that they simply take time and exposure to overcome.

Meditation with observation of narcissistic personality reflections will slowly start to ease the internal dialogue that generally contributes to this state. Like most people, when you are natural (like around your best friend) your creativity and gifts naturally come out. You don't need to be trained on them (though sometimes that can help a bit too)

Wacky and wisdom-filled?

It's also worth searching youtube for "Ben Bernanke was wrong" to see how utterly clueless some of our 'leading' economists can be.

Your other comment said that you try to make sure you don't attribute any of your success to your own hard work and study. Um, what does that even mean? You think the actions and mindset of the individual have absolutely zero effect on the outcome? As an experiment, why don't you try completely eliminating that variable and just stop trying, to see if it has no effect on where you go. Not only that, but how do you account for two people who are born in roughly symmetrical situations who go on to have completely different outcomes? While I like the part of your philosophy that acknowledges grace and appreciation for what you've been given, I think it's a bit absurd to remove yourSELF from the equation of where you're going, unless you have some massive guilt-complex that follows you around biting you in your own ass and this somehow alleviates it.

Okay, so you appreciate that your environment has played a role in where you are and where your going. That's valuable to acknowledge and - as an egoic and often delusional species -sometimes we lose track of that. But all your comments seem to reflect that you think the agent plays zero role in it's own outcome. Or, if you have refined it to a more plausible second point, what evidence can you provide me that the environment plays more of a role than the agent. If you want to start talking philosophy and determinism, then I'm happy to, but I really urge you to start making some really bad decisions to see how much effect your actions make. Seriously, stop wearing a seat belt, start yelling at every person you meet and being hostile to them, stop wearing clothes in public, stop working or taking any risks whatsoever, stop applying yourself to anything you love, go drink a handle of whiskey every night, completely stop exercising, play WOW for 18 hours a day, don't study philosophy, be close minded, tell yourself you hate yourself everyday. Just stop evaluating the effects of any decisions you make whatsoever. Seriously, lose all ownership, after all, the environment is the major determinant of what happens to you, so it literally doesn't matter if you decide to do these things. What've you got to lose?