Leo Gura

@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.

Therein lies the trick. It takes some work to understand the healthy versions of the lower stages.

@moon777light The notion of proof itself is an untennable notion because being is prior to proof. Proof is always a second order thing. All proof is conceptual. Metaphysics is prior to proof. It is impossible, for example, to prove that you exist or that you were born.

Hehe... Precisely so that cocky whippersnappers like you don't get such silly ideas.

Lol That is the epitome of the nondual perspective.

Actually, even if you are solidly at Green it is very likely you still have lessons to learn from healthy Blue and Red and even Purple role models.

@moon777light See my video: True vs False Skepticism. You are misusing skepticism.

@Jed Vassallo A 5-MeO trip only takes 60 mins. Making a lot more practical than LSD or others. You don't need to be in a retreat setting. Just a comfortable undisturbed setting for 60 mins.

Yes, that is prrcisely what awakening and spirituality is about: seeing through all illusions as much as possible. At first your ability to see through illusions is weak. With practice it becomes so strong that you finally see through the illusion of death, time, space, and physical reality. Basically, everything is an illusion. Ta-da! See my video mini-series: Self-Deception Mechanisms

@Aakash No, there is much more that you still do not understand about reality. Self-inquiry is not the only thing to know.