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To answer your question I will say that to see yourself as what you are not is to be unawakened; to know yourself as you are is to be awakened. The first sees himself as a thing, the latter as No-Thing. Now that we have that set up we can look at the pros and cons of being a thing versus being No-Thing.Being a thing is an awfully vulnerable situation. One is always under the pressure of other things, under the influence of all sorts of forces that are around. Being a body you are perishable, capable of losing parts of yourself, capable of becoming ill, capable of decaying, getting old and wrinkled and weak. A tremendously fragile thing, wouldn’t you say?On the more psychological aspect of being a thing, you must always present your thing in a manner that others will find acceptable. It is true that others see a body when they look at you, and so you have learned to identify yourself with that. You have seen, from childhood, that this body and what it does is sometimes praised and sometimes punished, sometimes liked and sometimes not. So you have learned to “be a good boy”, and as an adult you’re still being a good boy by fitting in nicely and without rebellion into the square society has “kindly” provided for you. You are - whether you know it or not - very tense about trying to somehow maintain the impossible posutre of fitting into the box, squeezing your vast Self into it. Condemning yourself to a thing in a world of things, you need others to love the thing you take yourself to be, so you are self-conscious, constantly on the lookout for how well the thing that you are is being received. When it is not received well, the thing you take yourself to be attacks the other things. It justifies the attack, of course, and maybe even believes those other things shouldn’t exist because they are deeply bothering the thing you believe yourself to be and seemingly squeeze yourself into.Let’s be clear that an image is a thing just as much as a body is a thing. An image-ination of yourself is how you think(g) yourself. The story of the body is you. This is called self-image. Believing this subjective story to be you, you are constantly on the defense of who you say you are. What others think and believe about you can bother you tremendously because they may see what your body is doing in a totally different light than you would like to present to them. Simply put, certain ideas threaten your idea of yourself (identity, self-image). And certain changes to the body do the same because you take yourself to be the body. Only things - images, ideas, bodies - can be threatend. Again, they are terribly fragile, both physically and psychologically, especially in an ever-changing world where one’s idea of oneself is being threatened all the time and basically forced to change, and the body is coming closer to death each moment and can be injured at any moment.To somewhat summarize it, being a thing, by your very nature you block out other things. You are by your nature closed. You are always bumping up against other things, demanding them to be different than they are so that they can fit better with the thing that you take yourself to be. All the things in the world are trying to somehow fit into a puzzle, but the puzzle is ever-changing. Even if you get a moment or two of perfectly fitting, and you sigh with relief - oops, it changes again!These are all cons, you may say. And truthfully I find no meaning in seeking for pros because in the first place you are not a thing. The reason I mention the cons is because taking yourself to be what you are not you have limited yourself beyond measure, condemned yourself to death, and made sure that you will be bound - sometimes more and other times less, yet always bound. You can replace the word ‘thing’ with ‘person’ or ‘human’. Just re-read this while replacing the words, and perhaps you will get clearer insights: you have “thing-ed” your Self.But only seemingly, of course, because you are not a thing, and that is the good news. If you don’t think of yourself you then are your Self. The Self can be experienced directly only and not thought of. How would you think of No-Thing (that which is not a thing)?Being No-Thing what can threaten you? What can kill you? What can bump up against you? In fact, the word ‘against’ has no meaning to Who You Really Are. Everything is small next to You, so to speak, for you contain it all. More preceisely, nothing can exist without You. Everything is You, but You are not everything. You are Yourself alone, No-Thing. Everything is No-Thing, and No-Thing never becomes anything other than Itself. ‘Things’ have no reality of their own. That is the illusion, the trance, the hallucination. Without No-Thing they are nothing.Surely No-Thing is not to be confused with nothing. You may call it The Mind of God, Spirit, Brahman, Reality, Awareness, Consciousness, The Tao That Cannot Be Named. All apparent ‘things’ are concepts within it. as they say: no‘thing’ is as it seems….Being No-Thing You are under no stress, no laws, no limits. You do not age or have any skin on which to form wrinkles. You lose self-consciousness because you are not the thing you look like. You lose the ability to feel that You can be judged, because only things can be judged. With that you lose any desire to judge, because judgment comes from fear. You have nothing to fear and no needs and no ability to be threatened. You are built wide open for whatsoever arises, and whatsoever arises arises as Yourself. You are Openeness Itself and there are no closing times.Of course there is also room for the apparent person/human. Actually, while some think this message is a denial of the person, in actuality it frees the person. When you are just a person your view is narrow and you are on the defense or on the attack quite often. But when you are no longer defending and attacking, being self-conscious and fretting what others may think - the expression of the person becomes gradually freed up. To no longer define yourself through the eyes of others is incredibly liberating. Wouldn’t you say that’s a pretty big pro for awakening?Lastly, in case you are intrigued after having read this how you can See the Truth that You indeed are No-Thing - this is very easy to See. All of my work is dedicated to pointing to This. Even more than that, to Living from This. That is what truly counts - placing trust in the No-Thing rather than the thing. There are 2 worlds (of which only one is Real), and wherever you focus determines which world you’ll see.

Sarajevo has a lot of amazing restaurants, both with traditional and contemporary cuisine. My personal favorite is Inat Kuca (English - House of spite). They serve traditional Bosnian dishes here and their cooking is excellent. The atmosphere is quite nice and it’s going to be a genuine Sarajevo dining experience. The story of the restaurant is interesting as well, and you can read it here: Inat kuća, Sarajevo, English is not so good, but you will understand the point)Restaurant is located in the old part of the city, across the bridge from the city hall (Vijecnica). City hall is worth visiting as well, if you are already there.My favorite dish here is “bamija”. Bamija is a vegetable (English - okra). In this recipe cooked with veal, other veggies and spices. It is served with a slice of lemon to sprinkle on top. You have to eat it with bread because that’s how we eat it. If bamija is not exactly what you want, there is a variety of other dishes including pies, shish kebab, sogan dolma, stuffed peppers, etc (the menu is found here: Inat kuća, Sarajevo)They are also quite happy to provide vegetarian options, but you have to ask specifically, since most traditional Bosnian meals are meat based.Please let me know if you visit, I would like to hear about your experience.Cheers!

Become an Excel guru - a 'right hand man/woman'.I've been in the financial services, investment banking and real estate industries for about 20 years - and been an INTP for longer than that. I've always had the desire to analyze things - to look at a problem from many different angles - and run through all the different permutations. But I've never once wanted to manage people. I was lucky to be asked by my employer at the time if I wanted to start building interactive business case modeling tools in excel. I did not have superior Excel skills, but I was the new guy with time on his hands.I was paired with a true Excel guru at the firm and she got me started reviewing a few of her models. The INTP in me was able to copy...err...reverse engineer the formulas, VB and format of her models, and incorporate the pieces into my own models. I also had an internal desire to make my models unique to me & my style, another trait I believe comes from being an INTP.This was a perfect match - I became an Excel guru and subject matter expert. As a consultant to telecom equipment manufacturers, I would travel with another consultant who was more engineering focused and we'd tag team clients. They would talk packets and what not, and I would explain how I could make a robust business case model and use VB based input screens to put a pretty face on their analysis. The creative part of me did a great job making the forms more intuitive than what had been done by my mentor - and they were very well received by our clients.That began a career that led me to become a quantitative analyst within the investment banking field for almost a decade, and now performing underwriting analysis for a governmental agency focusing on real estate development.I found out I was the perfect 'right hand man' in business. Someone else could be the outgoing, sales-focused person, and I could be the 'numbers geek'. As an INTP, I've crafted my career to suit my personality by:Supporting senior consultants instead of having to try to build my own client list.Spending more time in front of computer and less time in front of clients.Leveraging the investigating / learning skills I have by teaching myself Excel modeling and other software packages by trial and error & reverse engineering.Becoming a subject matter expert that people in finance/business can lean on. Providing data to ease the decision making process, but not actually responsible for making the decisions.And, most importantly...never having to manage a team! Of course, I do enjoy working with younger workers as a way of helping them grow as I was helped in the past. But its always as a mentor, not a boss. So that means training can be had over beers.All in all, I've been able to leverage this Excel knowledge and my inate analytical skills into a very good career. I know that my personality does not lend itself to leadership, management and significant upward mobility. But I am very fine with that. And I can lead by example and add value by creating work product that management/decision makers respect and can depend on.