Leo Gura

@clouffy Roughly Orange, Orange, Green. With lots of Blue still present in older generations.

@Vipassana I am aware of his content, although I haven't watched much of it. I agree he shares some good wisdom and insights. Many cult leaders share valuable insights. I'm all for learning from multiple sources. Just don't join a cult. It's very difficult to outgrow those red flags.

@Vipassana There is no contradiction between cults and genuine spiritual wisdom. Cults are often a mixture of both. It's a common mistake to assume that cults offer no valid spiritual insight. The issue is, spiritual insights via a video or book do not guarantee that the cult isn't a shit-show behind the scenes. Case in point: Osho's commune. Osho was a good teacher but a terrible community leader. Saying advanced stuff into a camera is very easy compared to running a high consciousness community. Narcissistic cult leaders are often exceptionally good at speaking, bullshitting, and putting up fake fronts. That is their Zone of Genius. So you can't take appearances too seriously. Look at their actions rather than their words. If the community leader is taking on multiple wives or asking for six figure donations or has a criminal history -- that's a HUGE red flag.

@Dorotheus Nice!

Kriya yoga is a set of special physical and energetic techniques for rewiring your nervous system. It is supposed to be much more powerful than meditation. Kriya yoga is a bit like micro-dosing psychedelics.

@electroBeam Sounds like you need something much more imaginative than engineering. Engineering work is usually pretty dry and routine. That's the major reason I switched my major from engineering to philosophy. Try looking at more artist careers like creative writing, design, film-making, fine art, etc. That's where you can really flex your imagination. For example, I love the imaginative nature of game design or storytelling.

In practice it's hard to help the world when you are underdeveloped and struggling to meet your basic needs. The point of developing yourself is so that you can become a better tool for helping uplift the world. But also, don't wait to be perfect before you help the world. You can work on both simultaneously. Help out in whichever ways you're able. Don't bite off more than you can chew. The greatest thing you will ever do for the world is to awaken yourself.

@Zec Do the exercises for an entire year at least.

Very common. Do not trust young spiritual leaders to run solid communities. Running a spiritual community requires enormous development, ethics, experience, wisdom, and maturity. Spiritual communities quickly devolve into sex cults if the leader isn't masterful in his self-control, ethics, and emotions. You can almost guarantee that spiritual communities lead by 20-30 year olds will devolve very quickly. They have no idea the challenges. Enlightenment alone is nowhere near enough to run successful spiritual community.

@Cocolove You learned some good lessons attempting that. Failure is part of the learning process. Now you have a bit of a better sense of how difficult it is to pull off a solid meditation retreat. Especially solo. Its takes super-human levels of self-discipline and dedication. Yes, you have to build up to it. Just like you cannot will yourself to bench press 300 lbs. It takes many months of ramping up to that. The value of something like Kriya yoga is that you can do it for 1hr per day and it will gradually strengthen you over the course of a year in a way which you would never be able to achieve with a week-long hardcore retreat. The reality is that it takes time to rewire the mind and build tolerance for meditation. Yes, you need a lot more daily practice. It also helps a lot to hit a point in your practice where you actually enjoy meditation. It's very hard to pull off a retreat if you're secretly hoping it stops. The key is to surrender to the whole process and try to enjoy the silence, solitude, and peace. But that probably won't happen your first few retreats. Just keep practicing and doing as much as you can. Remember, it's not all about quantity. The quality of your practice is far more important than quantity. Quantity without quality will not yield much results. Also be patient. You are young. You don't need to be enlightened tomorrow. It's okay if it takes 5 years of practice. You will still be ahead of everyone else.

Lol Precisely because you want to. Stop holding life purpose as something that NEEDS to be done. It's not about need, it's about desire to play a game. There's no need for Mario run across the screen and avoid turtle shells. But if you WANT, it can be a fun game. No one is forcing you to play Mario. If you would rather sit in your mother's basement and stare at the wall, go right ahead. If you don't want to do anything cool with your life, fine. Then be lame.

There is no such thing as "a reality". Reality is entangled with one's nervous system. Such that every living creature has a different reality. If there is an infinite number of possible ways to configure a nervous system, there are an infinite number of different realities. For example, in some realities the color red does not exist because of how the nervous system is structured. In other realities it is not possible to know that 5+5=10 because of how the nervous system is structured. For example, a donkey cannot realize that 5+5=10. It cannot have that insight. But a human can. And not all humans. Only those with a proper nervous system. A mentally disabled person cannot realize that 5+5=10. Imagine all the experiences and insights you are unable to have simply because your nervous system does not grant you access to them. Your nervous system is like a filter through which infinity is boiled down to a narrow limited finite set of experiences. Psychedelics alter your nervous system, allowing you to access experiences and insights that would otherwise be impossible. Which is why they're so uniquely useful for metaphysical work. But independent of all the above, there is the Absolute Truth, which you have access to if you are normal healthy human being.

Rather, value is a thought! You can use the mind to assign value to whatever, depending on your survival needs. All value is relative.

@ivory Lol, Southern California is Green. Not Oregon Green, but still Green.

It is what it is. Work on developing yourself. It doesn't matter what is happening around you really. Take extreme ownership of your development. Stop expecting other people or your community to build you a staircase to heaven. Build your own staircase. With all the books, videos, and resources available so easily today via the internet you have no excuse not to be at Turquoise. If you don't achieve it it's only due to one reason: you're being lazy and irresponsible. You already have all the information. Why aren't you taking action? Why aren't you building a million dollar business? Why aren't you meditating 3 hours per day? Why aren't you working on your life purpose? Why aren't you developing powerful relationships? Why aren't you eating healthy? Why aren't you doing yoga? Why aren't you doing solo retreats? Laziness There is no cure for laziness but to get to work.

Well, you could sit down, contemplate what those things are and realize they all fabrications of your mind. What is justice? What is law? What is order? What is good manners? What is the afterlife? Don't you find it odd that you value these things so highly yet you've never really wondered what they are or where they came from? Or if they're even real? How can you truly value these things if you don't know what they are? A big part of transcending Blue is starting to think critically for yourself and question everything that your culture taught you. Become skeptical of everything. Every belief must be questioned to death.

Just awaken

Yes, it's very valuable. Just don't become a devotee of any one teacher. Every teacher and teaching has blindspots. You must be capable of exploring a wide variety of perspectives and teachings or you will get trapped.

Obviously

@Jack Walter Leon You must awaken to understand. It cannot be explained to you so long as you've never woken up.

@Lynnel You did good. Some important insights there. Now you should be able to appreciate my Reality Is A Strange Loop video. More trips are required to answer the questions this trip of yours raised. Yes, mushroom trips can be quite twisted and difficult to make sense of. Other psychedelics like LSD or 5-MeO-DMT are clearer. The best way to escape thought loops is to change your state or physical location. Just going into a different room can be enough to break out of a bad thought loop, or going outside, or eating a snack, or turning on some silly music and dancing around for a few minutes. You gotta learn to shift your state. Meditation is also very helpful. If you're good at meditation you should be able to just silence the mind and its thoughts. And when all else fails: just SURRENDER

@Jack Walter Leon The soul as you call it is ultimately made out of spirit. And spirit is nothing. But this is NOT the nothing you are thinking of.

If you bring a dualistic attitude to it, it will appear so to you. But you could also not do that.

Self-inquiry is supposed to be a struggle. Of course you are doubtful and confused. That cannot be helped. The only thing that can ultimately clear up the confusion is awakening. You must do the inquiry and struggle through all the doubts and emotional issues which will inevitably arise. Awareness/emptiness isn't really felt, it is awared. We use the word "feeling" colloquially. Strictly speaking it is not a feeling. But feeling is much closer than thinking or imagining.

@ItO They are the same. Awareness is nothing. Nothing is not inner. It is omnipresent. It feels like its inner because that's what ego has done with it: appropriated it to construct a sense of self. As you do self inquiry that sense of emptiness will stop feeling like it is inside the head/body. It will spill out into the world.