Leo Gura

But supposedly a soul must have a beginning, even if it lasts across multiple lifetimes. The universe did not start out with human souls. They had to be created, and with a full and final liberation they end. They must also be individuated from other souls since all people do not share the same samskaras and past-lives. And just how many souls are there? 7 billion? What happens when the human population doubles? Is there an infinite number of human souls sitting around waiting for the Earth's population to grow before they can take Earthly form? Where did these 7 billion souls come from? Why would they exist long before humans were even a species? Seems like an ineffective design. Or are human souls the recycled souls of dinosaurs? So the question is, when these souls were born many life-times ago, were they all equally spiritually capable? Or were some more capable than others? Is the soul of a Neanderthal the same as the soul of a Homo Sapien? Lots of questions arise when it comes to souls and past lives.

@clouffy Many people end up doing spiritual practice precisely because they are fed up with depression and suffering. Through spiritual practice, through consciousness work, you can learn how depression is caused by the meanings your mind creates, and you can train yourself to stop having those negative thoughts. It is not possible to be depressed if you fully in the present moment, not lost in the conceptual past or future. But this will takes lots of mindfulness training to actualize. It's not enough to merely know it intellectually. This issue is not just about enlightenment. It's about emotional mastery. You must become more conscious of how your mind creates emotional states and how it assigns meaning to an otherwise meaningless world. You don't need to be enlightened to start developing mindfulness over your emotions. Nor will enlightenment automatically give you mastery of your emotions. I recommend to burn this candle from both ends. In practice, you need some "agenda" to bootstrap your spiritual journey. You can shed the agenda later, once you're towards the end. Careful not to burn the bridge before you've crossed.

@winterknight I wonder, is this logic applied to artists and athletes too? Did Tiger Wood spend many lifetimes playing golf? Why not apply this logic across the board? But if you acknowledge there are natural differences in golfing ability across people, why not for spirituality as well? Does every human soul start existence with identical spiritual capacities? Why would that be so?

@Richard Alpert In practice you can still learn stuff from people like that. It just requires care.

In any human endeavor you should expect to see a Gaussian distribution curve of results and effectiveness. There will always be super-human freaks who will attain spiritual heights inaccessible to normal people just as there are weightlifters who can bench press 1000 lbs. Best not to compare yourself to them, or you will forever feel inadequate. Walk YOUR path. Your path will be uniquely yours.

This is why gurus keep their mouth shut about such things. The ego-mind cannot understand it and only becomes more deluded with fear.

He is acting out stage Blue/Orange with a massively repressed Green shadow. Which is a common developmental pathology at his level. The danger with taking his teachings too seriously is that he will corrupt your mind with his massive Green shadow, causing you to have a massive Green shadow, thus stunting your growth to higher levels. His politics is also helping to maintain the status quo of corruption, American Exceptionalism, and mass income inequality as he resists systemic reform of capitalism. With all that said, of course some of his teachings can be valuable. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Very few teachers are 100% wrong. Rather, it's a question of how developmentally advanced, accurate, and healthy are their teachings? Is he teaching you pathological stuff like duality, judgment, hatred, demonization, dogma, illusions, division? Or is he teaching you love, consciousness, truth, integration, holism?

The hero goes through lots of suffering of course. My point is, the hero isn't undertaking his journey in order to suffer. Suffering isn't his motive. The Buddha didn't seek suffering, he sought the Holy Grail (an escape from the inevitability of death). Suffering was just a by-product of seeking the Holy Grail. Generally speaking it's good to have positive motivation for whatever you are doing, not negative one. Seeking rather than avoiding.

Hare Krishnas a very dogmatic folks. Many of them are just brainwashed believers who have never approached awakening. This is the classic problem with religion: people belief stuff without ever validating it through consciousness work. Which is actually worse than atheism. At least the atheist values empirical investigation, albeit a crippled materialistic version of it.

@LastThursday To me ambition is elemental. Don't try to redefine it using other words. It is what it is. Find it in your direct experience and observe how it works. It is a sort of emotive force. Some people have more of this force, others less.

He's a late bloomer

You will only reach equanimity when you are fully conscious of what consciousness. And that is only possible directly, without analogy. Analogy, metaphor, and symbols are the only things separating you from God consciousness. You are going 1 step too far. You must take the zeroth step to reach yourself.

@bejapuskas Of course the biological, biographical self cannot achieve satori since satori is the absence of a biological, biographical self. Yes, Fred gives some great direct pointers, cutting through the stories.

Look around the room. Everything you see is consciousness. No analogy needed when you are neck-deep in water. You can't really analogize consciousness because since everything is consciousness, your analogy is itself consciousness.

He's a character. Just don't expect instant enlightenment.

Creativity seems like a drive, like sex, but it is never satisfied. Maslow puts creativity as a self-actualization drive at the top of the pyramid. Although for very creative people creativity can be as fundamental as food. Creative people tend to be more insane. But sanity is overrated

One Simple Rule For Acing Life? It's a weird title

It feels like your mind gets into a groove. Theta and Delta can feel very deep, sleepy, dreamy, like the depths of one's subconscious. Alpha feels more meditative.

I don't think of it that way. It doesn't feel like a negative need. It feels more like a postive need to express oneself. Like life bursting forth with creative enthusiasm. There is this passion for creating stuff just for the sake of creation. I have found that some people just aren't into creativity. It has always baffled me because my entire life is dominated by creativity. Like 24/7 creativity mode.

@Seed But you are also in hell, because of your imagination

@Seed There probably are such people. They would lean more artistic I would think. I am both very imaginative and ambitious. Which is a terrible combo for meditation. The best meditators are the stamp lickers, lol.

@Seed I consider those ambitious people. I guess you could also have that as a third class, since some folks are ambitious but not so imaginative, like the Wallstreet banker types. Obviously there are many ways to classify people. I was speaking of one distinction I have spotted over the years of dealing with people. I have run across people with very little ambition and they don't seem to care.

From what I have seen there are two types of people: ambitious people and unambitious ones. Ambitious people crave a life purpose to work on. Unambitious people are happy working at the Post Office licking stamps. Unambitious people seem to have no vision or concern for their impact on the world. It would make sense that such is the case since society needs a lot of stamp lickers and factory workers. But I think it is also the case that a lot of folks would be more ambitious and visionary if they were shown how and given more opportunity. The degree of income inequality and our medival education system destroy a lot of potentially ambitous people from flourishing.

That will not be enough. You're not appreciating the depth of the problem here. You were never born. Logic, science, and cause & effect are total illusions. Merely reflecting on this will not be enough. You must do an industrial-grade spiritual practice to change your state of consciousness because from your current state you are totally stuck, like a character in a video game world. Or, psychedelics. That would be the fastest way to blow up your materialist logical paradigm. Logically you can understand whatever you want, but when it comes to actually facing your own death, all logic will fly out the window. This is a profoundly personal matter for you. How willing are you to die to know the Truth? Because that is what we are talking about when we say nonduality.