Leo Gura

Depends on how you define thriving and how strict you want to be about truth. Success is possible while staying truthful. It's just harder.

I've been in the trap Aubrey is in. Trying to play to his audience, trying to do the work publicly, trying to play the guru role. It's too performative. The real work is done privately when you go away from YouTube. For Aubrey to really slay this beast he'd need to quit YT for a year or two and stop all the sex, relationships, socializing, partying, weed, and business. Just sit alone for 6 months and stop all social activity. That is the real work. But this would kill him. He's addicted to the attention and the whole social game of it all. Real spirituality is not a social activity. The only way to stop caring what others think about you is to realize that all the rewards of the social domain are fake -- fool's gold. The whole social domain is fake and false. He's not serious enough to give it up. He wants to keep playing that role of a spiritual influencer and maintain that whole New Age facade. I don't think he understands any other kind of spirituality but the socializing and the feeling good kind. Real spirituality would bore him to death.

The minds doing it would need to be very different from typical minds today. It would basically require most of the minds involved to be Awakened and super developed to the Construct-Aware stage at least. You can't build a society on truth without being conscious of what Truth is and what obscures it.

I don't find it fruitful. Too intellectual to shift consciousness. Existential contemplation is ineffective until your state has been raised. Sleepiness is a big problem for me. But it tends to go away after a few days of hardcore meditation. Sleepiness is like a crazy potent defense mechanism that must be broken through. Sometimes you just gotta sleep extra much until you get it out of your system. Real meditation only starts after you got the sleepiness out of the way through a few napping sits.

Great quote

@Elton I would tell you to contemplate how you plan to be personally developed when you don't deeply understand the social matrix your development is taking place within? I don't have a magic book for you. Understanding society takes a lot of reading and thinking. My question is, Why aren't you passionate about understanding society? Since you're living inside it all the time. You're not curious to explore the house you live in?

You have to look at how much of business, governement, religion, entertainment, media, education, and relationships hinge on falsehood to survive. If you removed the falsehood from those domains much of the stuff there would colapse. Just look at Israeli government or Russian government or Saudi government -- all built on lies. What God can such people know?

Plug

@Nilsi Do you really think you are telling me a thing I don't know? I'm just trying to help people realize that God is an empirical word.

Every experience of a kangaroo is just as singular. Yet we can speak of kangaroos without all this post-structuralist masturbation. What I said does not deny the variety of experiences that God comes in. Yes, there is great variety, but also a core.

@Nilsi Way overthinking it. God is an experience and we use words to talk about experiences. The end.

@Carl-Richard And the purest Christian is not Christian at all. People cling to culture because they are not intelligent enough to think independently. When you fully realize what God is you will die of laughter thinking about how stupid Christians are. Like clueless children playing their games.

Yes he is.

@ExploringReality Rent a cheap motel room.

My closet has an A/C vent. Even the cloest is not necessary. You can sit on your couch.

I don't even do that anymore. I've boiled it down to the bare essential: at home I just sit in a chair in my dark closet. You do not need any fancy place to do your retreats. All you need is a closet and no distractions from people. The hardest part of the retreat is just setting aside the chunk of time to do it. It's like planning a vacation, but in your closet.

At home is great as long as you can enforce discipline on yourself. There is no need to pay thousands of dollars to do retreats with people unless you are too weak to handle it yourself.

I don't have a way of quantifying it for you. Obviously deep no-self was experienced. It's possible to go so deep into no-self that memories of your name and life are absent. It's like forgetting you were ever a human. In a sense being human is something you're constantly imagining. Until you're not.

You can say it, but that's not how Christians see it.

Ego is more than just thoughts or ideas. It is a state of consciousness. Which is why it's so hard to shake. You don't break free of ego just by stopping thinking. You need a state change, which is beyond your conscious control.

That's not the issue. The question is why?

It affects people quite differently. Do not assume everyone has the same trips on it. Yes, it is not healthy for you if used chronically. But using a few times is not a problem. For me, ketamine is way inferior to DMT, 5-MeO, or mushrooms. But I know people who have profound experiences on K.

I don't know much about how Hindus hold their gods. I thought Hindus were more open and polytheistic.

It's just one aspect of this work. To have a reference experience for God is a great thing to acquire. Of course it's not the end of the work. It's just the beginning. And on your way to acquire that reference experience much inner work will need to happen. So the benefit is not just in that one reference experience but all the work necessary to get it.

Ralston teaches different things than me. There are things Ralston can teach you that I cannot. And there are things I can teach you that Ralston cannot. I should not be your only teacher because that would be too limiting for you. And Ralston is also limited.