Leo Gura

The whole point of true happiness is not to base it on mood. Imagine being happy even when you're in a bad mood. That's real happiness. And it's not easy to develop because our ideas of happiness are so mood based and survival based. Those ideas require deep deconstruction. You have to deeply grok that attachments to physical things and even emotional states always create suffering -- sometimes gross suffering, but sometimes very subtle suffering. This was a core teaching of the Buddha. And it's a very important point which people overlook. Outwitting suffering is something only a master can do. Suffering is extremely sneaky! Because it's central to your survival. You must literally transcend the entire survival drive to access true happiness. Awakening allows for superhuman levels of happiness.

@Consilience There basically is no serious meditation without serious concentration ability.

Careful. I know extroverts who are awakened and do spiritual practice. And obviously many extroverts make a killing in creativity, business, art. There's more than one way to skin a cat. One should only be a lone wolf if that's what one is called to do. It's not necessary for success. With that said, personally I love lone wolfing life. But that's just me. People here must find whatever kind of lifestyle resonates with them. This is a highly individualized thing.

Great! But that's just like the tip of one hair on the Ox's tail

@Mikael89 Hehe... You must awaken to what Love is to understand these discussions. We are not talking about romantic love here. This requires an epic enligthenment experience which will melt your cold heart. Contemplate: What is Love? Hint #1: it is not what you think it is. Hint #2: psychedelics make this contemplation a lot easier.

Those 5 insights are of course all true and very important to realize. But there's also a lot more stuff to realize. The "mechanics" of God are not addressed well by Buddhism.

Because you are in a contracted state of consciousness. Also, since Love is all things, it doesn't necessarily have to be felt. You don't have to like all aspects of reality. Hatred too is a form of love. Think about what "Everything is Love" entails. That means pain is love. It does not mean that you will never feel pain.

I never wanted to. It just happens to be Truth. You have yet to realize the Buddha's central teaching of Annica or Impermanence. Reality is designed in such a way that no from can be permanent. The ultimate goal is to realize that there is no difference between form and formlessness. But to realize this requires surrender of attachment to form. So again, the entry fee of immortality is death. Immortality cannot be attained through physical means, it must be attained through spiritual realization. The problem of death is not a physical one the way materialists assume, it is a metaphysical one. You must realize that material reality is imaginary. That your own birth is imaginary. Then you will be free.

That is not possible. All forms are impermanent. The only thing that can be immortal is formlessness. So long as you are identified with any form whatsoever, you are mortal. Only a devil would claim that God is a selfish devil. So nice try, but no, don't confuse your devilry with that of God. If I let you, you would make a devil out God! See what a devil you are?! Hehe.... No, you just misunderstand animals. As I have repeatedly said, animals are not in God-mode. They are God in animal-mode. This is a big and significant difference. It is the survival of any limited identity. Any identity attached to any kind of form. Any identity less than the entirely of reality. So, a kangaroo is committed to surviving as a kangaroo. This makes it selfish. You are commited to surviving as a human. This makes you selfish. If you weren't bothered by living or dying, you'd be selfless and immortal. The entry fee for immortality is death.

@Ar_Senses Well, mystical experiences and samadhi states are a clear sign of results. I'm not saying that's the end, but the beginning. If you don't what a mystical experience or a samadhi state is, take a psychedelic and they will quickly show you. Then try to get similar results via other methods. If you have meditated for a few years but never had a mystical experience or samadhi, then you aren't doing it properly or you need to find a better method. Take a psychedic to see how much you're meditation is missing.

@ahmad ibdah I am all things at all times. There is no end to me. I go on forever. And so do you, since you are me

Lol The past is a thought happening in the now. Nothing can actually be in the past or the future since everything happens now. Check your experience. Notice all thoughts happen only in the now. Don't believe me. Check!

The point of enlightenment is to realize what death is. It cannot be explained to you in a believable way. You have to experience it to understand it. Until then you will of course fear death. Because you believe you are real.

No, that is not what groundless means. Groundless means that you can never say what the material substance of anything is because anything you claim to be the substance will itself need a further substance to explain it, and so on, to infinity. You can't claim the substance of any form to be another form, the way science tries to do. You cannot say that a table is made of atoms because the atoms themselves are just another form in an infinity of forms. You must grok that the substance of everything is nothing. Another way to say it is: a table is not made out of atoms. A table is a table. This is tricky to grasp because it is too direct to be grapsed. It is raw Truth/Being. A nondual state of consciousness is required to understand it.

I would be very suspicious of it. The potential for self-deception with that technique is enormous. Stick to direct consciousness and healthy doses of admitting: I don't know.

Mushrooms are super entrancing. More so than any other psychedic. It's like being mesmerized by a supernatural force. Cool stuff!

That's right. A seperate self based on illusion must always fight with the world keep from re-uniting with it. Death is that reunification. But death is also infinite love. So what a devil fears most is infinite love. It's a metaphor for the human psyche. No If such a creature existed it would still be an aspect of God and not seperate from me. Science has made 5-MeO-DMT. What more do you want? The thing people don't understand about the immortality elixer is that it works by killing you! So the last thing a devil will do is drink it. The devil is terrified of meeting God. He is committed to staying a devil. Animals ARE selfish devils. They are unabashedly selfish. They are so selfish they don't even know or care what selfishness is.

@Hampus I don't really subscribe to the idea that you should move to a higher city in order to develop yourself. Far more important is how you manage your life, regardless of where you are. As long as you're in a physically safe and free society, that's basically good enough. The real work then begins. The inner work. If you are in an oppressive violent country, then that is important to resolve.

That would actually be inauthentic and untruthful for me.

Well, sex and intimacy are still meaningful to me. But the process of chasing after it is not.

Precisely because a devil is merely God in disguise! Really, there are no devils. A devil is just what we call it when God isn't aware that it's God. Also, devilry is inherently unstable and self-defeating. The suffering that devilry creates ultimately becomes so strong that the devil is forced to admit he is wrong. Either that or he doubles down and becomes an even bigger devil until finally physical death takes him. So now you see why death is such an important part of the divine plan of Love. Death is the safety valve which ensures that devils never ultimately prevail. A devil can only prevail in the short-term. God always prevails in the long-term: by killing you and freeing you of all your limits! Death is like the reboot button on your computer, for when it bugs out Could you imagine if devils lived forever? Now that would be a problem. Fortunately, all devils must die. Unfortunately, you are a devil. Fortunately, you are also God Say... that's a good book title The profoundly twisted irony is this: the devil only behaves like a devil in the first place because he can die! If the devil was immortal he would not act like a devil, he would act like God! If a devil should ever realize that he is actually immortal, he will stop acting like a devil and start acting like God. Ta-da!

To be more accurate, I just have a different kind of social life than most people consider a social life. My social life is through my work. For example you might ask if the Buddha or Gandhi had a social life. And the answer is, their social life was everything that revolved around their life's work. The same goes for me, except with the added wrinkle that we now live in the digital age, where the notion of "social" has expanded to include all of the activity happening through digital communication. If you include digital communication, my social life is quite significant. The very definition of "social life" is flexible and relative and changes across the ages. If you mean, do I go to the bar and drink beers with people, or attend dinner parties, or go bowling with friends? Definitely not. Such things are not interesting to me.

He's using a very loose definition, something along the lines of: anyone who's ever be in a non-symbolic state. But that's very short of what I'm talking about. I don't consider Jeffery Martin enlightened. Not even close. He's still thoroughly materialistic in his explanations of reality & consciousness. His research is good, but far short of where this rabbit hole ultimately goes. To me, escaping suffering has never been the goal. The goal has always been understanding reality. You are right, most people pursue spirituality rather selfishly & narrow-mindedly -- to escape pain or improve their life. The deepest sages I think pursue it for understanding & Truth, not to escape something negative. I generally agree. People are so different that they have different desires and needs. But also, not all roads lead to the same place, and there are many partial ways to go about spirituality. I don't get the sense that Shinzen actually knows what Truth is. I don't know. Answering this is problematic because I don't have access to anyone's mind but my own. Shinzen's techniques are good. Will they get you to the deepest levels of understanding? Probably not. But that's okay, they don't need to. A toolbox needs more than one tool in it. Use Shinzen's techniques, but also don't stop there. Explore other things like psychedelics. I doubt you'll find a technique more powerful than 5-MeO-DMT. But that doesn't mean you should only use 5-MeO-DMT. An army doesn't just use nuclear weapons. It has all sizes of weapons in its arsenal because a nuclear weapon is not always the right weapon for the job. It's hard to say. We don't have good science on this yet. Generally speaking good techniques to try are all the ones I've shared in the past: Meditation Self-inquiry Strong determination sitting Contemplation Psychedelics Vipassana retreats Solo retreats Yoga Dark room retreats Shamanic breathing Etc. These are well-worn methods that work for many people. And in the end, you gotta wonder, is there any other option? Those are the best techniques mankind has developed so far. So you might as well start tinkering around with them. With practice you should find whatever works best for you. There will be future video about the many facets of awakening. All of that is survival. You're still not appreciating what I mean by the notion of survival. It's a much deeper notion than most of you guys here yet realize. Rest, play, and showing affection is all part of survival. Without them a mammal would be dead. Animals don't meditate. You're projecting that onto them. They sit and do nothing sometimes. But I wouldn't call that meditation. Don't get me wrong, I still like Shinzen as a teacher. Nothing I say here is meant to attack or undermine the work of Shinzen or Ralston or whoever. I'm just adding some extra wrinkles to it. I don't know much about him. You'd have to ask him what he's become conscious of.

I don't have a social life. Never cared to have one. It does not interest me. I rarely watch movies these days. Hard to find good movies. Most of them are juvenile superhero crap. Occasionally Hollywood makes a good movie for adults. But that's like twice a year. The rest is popcorn spectacles & money machines, which I don't care for. Occasionally I'll play a video game. When a good one comes out. But again, that's quite rare. Maybe once a year. I don't care for most games. It needs to be something original and deep or artistic.

Certainly not all cities in Oregon. Rural parts of every state/country are basically Blue. NYC has some Green aspects but also a lot of Orange. Many of the top cities in the USA are Orange/Green hybrids, not fully Green. A fully Green city would be very hippy-ish. Something like Sedona AZ maybe. Technically no city has a single color. Each part of the city has its own color, so it's tricky because we're talking about loose averages.