Leo Gura

It's not about playing victim, it's about recognizing systemic inequalities which are de-harmonizing society and creating needless suffering. It's not just black people who are hurt by it. When people are not treated fairly, they then lash out and we all suffer the consequences collectively. What I am saying actually requires taking responsibility for the systemic inequalities in our government. It is irresponsible to call people who were economically and racially oppressed for 200 years "victims". That is gaslighting. That's exactly like beating your wife and then telling her, "Oh, stop crying. Stop playing the victim here. It's all just a state of mind. Think positive." That's the definition of devilry. There are real material inequalities at work here. You're not appreciating the systemic downstream effects of slavery and racism. It doesn't just fix itself in 50 years.

It certainly helps, especially when starting out. If only as emotional support and accountability. Might as well have fun doing it. It tends to be more fun with wings.

@Hello from Russia This is a very trick topic. Yes, for survival (illusion) cause and effect is great. But at the level of Absolute Consciousness, cause & effect are a total illusion. This cannot be thought about. You must enter a totally nondual, Absolute state of consciousness. Cause/effect = duality If reality is ONE, how can it be caused or be an effect? You must have two parts for cause & effect to be viable. So within duality there is cause & effect but within nonduality there is not. Another way to phrase it is: cause & effect is relative.

He was a con man for most of his life. It's just that power corrupts and makes all personal defects 100x worse. You have to understand that Trump has manipulated his media image from the very beginning. His whole public image is a thin lie. He's neither successful, nor powerful, nor a good negotiator, nor a good businessman, etc. It's all bullshit spun by his ego. Also with age ego can get worse. The devil gets absorbed in his own devilry until he is too far gone. Alex Jones is a good example of this. I agree that Trump is serving his function for the greater ultimate good, in a twisted sort of way. We need someone to show up how ugly Orange can be.

Moral of the story, don't play the game of life as an orc mage or an elf tank

Be careful with such stereotypes. Don't forget that the majority of Americans voted against Trump! Technically Trump represents a minority of the country. Not only that, but most people voting for Trump were duped by his con game. The media did a really bad job informing voters of Trump's true nature prior to the election. Most people voting for him thought he was a successful business guy at stage Orange, when in fact he is closer to stage Red. America is not that regressive. Most Americans are conscious enough to see that Trump behaves like a devil. Even conservatives see this. Politics, government, and culture are always evolving. We are in a transition period from Orange to Green. It's going to be a bit rocky but we'll make it. Just because there is ego backlash doesn't mean we give up hope and stop evolving. The ego will always bitching and moaning. We don't let that deter us. The American political system is very corrupt and does not accurately represent the will of the people. Democracy is being undermined by money and ego. The majority of Americans are for policies like Medicare For All, Free College, ending wars, net neutrality, etc. It's just that corporate interests exert a corrupting influence on elections. In the future this will all change and money in politics will be outlawed. The hearts of the people are not so bad. It's the corporate influence which is heartless. This is a function of stage Orange materialism running amok. We will grow out it in time. 2020 might be a pivotal election cycle -- the beginning of the end for Orange domination. We'll see.

LOL --------- Here's a great example of stage Green reacting against solid stage Blue: It's like both of them are play out a script.

You've dipped your toe in the rabbit hole so far. From here it only gets better (or worse)

@Igor82 A decent intro trip. Be very careful about combining 5-MeO with something like modafinil. I don't get that much of a body load on 5-MeO.

It's not about handing out money. It's about correcting systemic inequalities. The system is rigged by wealthy and powerful egos. The ego never plays fair. The money is a compensating force against centuries of systemic rigging.

Not so fast!

Right, which shows you the connection between brain chemistry, mind state, and behavior. What psychedelics reveal is just how many different kinds of states of consciousness there are. Not just a dozen, but millions of radically different states. Various people can be in those various states depending on their brain chemistry, genetics, etc. Some people are stuck in an insane state and that is their reality. The fact is that some states are far more conducive to awakening and spiritual practice than other states. If your brain is in the right state, waking up is effortlessly easy. Other the other hand, if your brain in the wrong state, nothing you do will wake you up. State is absolutely critical for this work.

Yes, this is a huge issue. What the world needs more than enlightened gurus teaching nonduality is a bridge from where the world is now to a place where folks can just be openminded enough to buy a book about nonduality. Which is why I teach a lot of stuff besides strict nonduality.

I'm a fan. He had a wonderful way with words. Almost poetic. I love this one:

If blacks in America received $30 trillion dollars in reparations for slavery (which is just one estimate of the damage done during slavery), the IQ gap would disappear. That's my empirical claim. It could be tested. But of course the whole point is that no one wants to test it. The whole point of the IQ race debate is to deny that blacks are economically abused. The ego wants to blame it on their "inferior genetics", rap music, drugs, sex, black culture, laziness, etc. The economic unfairness is deliberately overlooked. Because it's too true to admit! It's too much responsibility. What white ego wants to admit that blacks in America incurred $30 trillion dollars worth of abuse? It's too outrageous to admit. The amazing thing is that blacks have as high an IQ as they do, given the amount of abuse they incurred. A 10 point IQ difference is very small given the historical context and their economic situation. Hell, one easy way to remove the black IQ gap is to simply change the way we fund public schools. Make all our public schools evenly funded rather than basing the funding off local real estate taxes. This would equalize funding for school in regions with low real estate values. This one change alone could equalize the IQ gap. But no one wants to implement it because it means whites will lose their best schools. See, blaming genetics is very convenient because then it means we don't have to make any tough policy changes. The ego abuses a victim out of selfishness, then it blame the victim's genetics. This way the ego can feel righteous and superior while it keeps behaving like the selfish devil that it is. The whole purpose of the ego is to prevent honest self-reflection. The devil cannot look himself in the mirror, so he covers up all the mirrors.

There is some truth to this. But it's important to teach stage Blue & Orange memes in a healthy, non-pathological, non-exclusionary way. For example, Jordan Peterson teaches these memes but he laces them with his toxic, judgmental, ethnocentric, dualistic shadow -- which then rubs off on his students. You must actually sit down and contemplate through these issues to understand how your mind works. Believing me is next to useless. Sit down with a journal and contemplate questions like: What is reason? What is evidence? What is data? What is interpretation? What is science? What is truth? What is knowledge? How do we know anything? How do I know I can trust my own mind? What if my mind is lying to me? How is my perspective biased? Where did my beliefs come from? Why do I believe the things I believe? If I don't know anything, how should I act? etc. See my video: How To Contemplate Using A Journal All the answers are inside you. But you have to sit down and dig them out.

Yes, it definitely does. But I was sensitive to psychedelics even before 5-MeO. 5-MeO just took my sensitivity through the roof. There are many factors at work here.

Reminds me of this guy: https://www.actualized.org/insights/the-pineal-gland-artist

Indeed There is good reason for unhappiness and delusion though. It keeps you alive. If all delusion was removed tomorrow, society would collapse into anarchy and cannibalism. You can remove delusion within yourself, but doing it across all of society is unworkable at this point in human evolution. Society is like a house of cards held together with snot (delusion). If you insist too much on cleaning up all the snot, it will all fall apart. So the snot must be cleaned up very carefully and gradually to prevent catastrophic collapse.

We'll be covering that one in the next episode.

That only pushes the question back one step. The question is, why do most people not want to be? Want, after all, is not a free thing. Your wants are determined by your genetics, environment, and other factors outside your control. Why do some people want to eat people? Why do some people want to murder people?

@Identity That's the art of devilry Every ideological bubble feels self-consistent and "reasonable". As long as you stay inside the bubble and don't go venturing outside. To create your own reality-bubble all you need to do is exclude, deny, and judge alternative perspectives. If you notice, Trump is a master at this. He's totally living in his own realty-bubble and you can see how he manipulates himself every day in order to exclude anything that would contradict his bubble. This is extremely dangerous when one has a lot of power. This is why we make a deep study of epistemology. So that we become self-aware of how our own mind constructs reality-bubbles.

What must be deeply understood is that reason serves ego. Reason is NOT a function of truth or facts. Reason is designed to justify whatever serves the ego. In the case of the alt-right and these genetic IQ debates, a stage Blue/Orange ego is working backwards from its conclusion that European civilization must be superior. (Notice how convenient is it that these egos happen to be European! What a shocker ) So they turn to "science" and "genetics" to solidify that fantasy in their own minds. That's what all this is really about. It has nothing to do with truth, facts, actual intelligence, or reality. What all of the alt-right boils down to is identity politics. They are trying to preserve their white male European identity in the face of a culture, society, era which is forcing us to adopt more global and inclusive identities. Their egos are scared of adopting a wider, more inclusive sense of self. That's all. The rest is just their justification games. "Science" and "reason" is used in these games because it lends an air of authority and truthfulness. After all, "How can one be wrong with science on one's side? Science is just objective facts, man! Facts don't care about your feelings. The data doesn't lie." LOL In reality there is no such thing as "data". There's ego cherry-picking & interpreting data to boost its survival. See, the devil always cloaks himself in a veneer of "truth".

WinterNight is not boasting about it. He's very humble. Watch your projections. There is nothing wrong with saying you are enlightened if you in fact are. All it means is that you are conscious of your true nature. That is not an egoic boast, unless you make it so. Of course plenty of folks on this forum claim to be enlightened when in fact they are not, or their enlightenment is very shallow. But some folks here are genuinely enlightened. Sometimes it's hard to sort the wheat from the chaff because communicating via forum doesn't give enough information in many cases. Although even via a forum, it's still quite clear who is spiritually mature and who isn't. You can tell just from the tone of their posts and their attitude. One of the hallmarks of a spiritually mature person is that he is unreactive and non-judgmental.

Only the whole thing. It's WAY WAY WAY more radical than you can imagine. When you finally realize that you never even existed, that you were never even born, it leaves you totally speechless and baffled. Like, "WTF?????!!!!!! There was never a me? How is that even possible?????"