Leo Gura

@Parki By framing it that way, you're actually describing idealism or phenomenalism. The naive realist believes that what he sees corresponds to an external world behind the scenes, which he thinks looks and works very much the way he sees it.

@Socrates Yes, which is why I said this approach is only gonna work if you're very driven and entrepreneurial. The whole point is that you're going off-roading. If you desire a paved road when you go off-roading, then you shouldn't really be off-roading, you should stick to the highway. Also, to be clear, going autodidact shouldn't be thought of as rejecting formal schooling. Many autodidacts had formal schooling. Obviously you need a way to feed yourself, whether that's your parents or your savings or a job. It might be worth going to college just for the scholarship money, if you can get it. That's way better than working at McDonalds for 4 years.

@Shane Roberts I've found that doing one-off projects rarely works, because one lacks the requisite experience to create anything that will stand up against the polish work of masters. So your best bet is to decide upon what is the ONE thing you want to become a master in, and then bet all your chips on that. That's basically how I came to the lessons described the life purpose course. I tried a lot of individual projects myself and they kept disappointing me because I wasn't committing to mastery enough.

@Frank B Have you heard of this thing called the Do-Nothing technique? It's one hell of a thing

@Saba I cannot tell you that. Therein lies your work. The universe gave you a brain and consciousness so you could puzzle it out. Contemplate, Why am I creating this suffering? Don't just think about it once or twice casually. Sit down and seriously contemplate it for an hour straight, with focus.

@Epiphany_Inspired Depends on your goals. If you shoot straight for enlightenment, expect it to derail many of your materialistic success goals. But then again, it's not like getting success will do anything for your happiness level.

@username When comparing spiritual teachings, you have to be extremely careful about terminology and language use. Terms like "logic", "free will", "God", "consciousness", "mind", "the self", "you/me/I", could have 180 degree difference in meanings. You have to look at the context they are being used in. Yes, you could say there is a certain "logic" to God and reality. But that's just a manner of speech. Like I could say there's a certain logic to operating a Windows PC, or a certain logic to playing beer pong, or a certain logic to psychedelic trips, or a certain logic to meditation, or a certain logic to suicide bombers. But that's a very loose use of that word. Yes, there is a certain logic to the Neti Neti method, where you realize that if you're having an experience, it cannot be you. To your other point, I noticed that his understanding of Buddhism is very limited. And his criticism of the Neo's saying they don't exist also fails to address their true meaning. When the Neo's say you don't exist, they mean the personal human self, not the Absolute self. The Neo's are teaching from the point of view of the ego, whereas Vedanta teaches from the point of view of the Absolute. It actually makes a lot of sense to teach from the ego's point of view, because the student is identified with ego. If you tell the student he exists, he's likely assume, "Yeah, of course I exist. I'm this body/mind right here. I got it! Duh!" But when you tell the student, "You don't exist!!!" he immediately gets scared and put on the spot. Now he has to come up with evidence for his body/mind identification, which he starts to see is impossible. And that creates an opening. James is a great teacher, but he suffers a bit from being a Vedanta hardliner. He feels old-school Vedanta is the ultimate teaching. Well, that's a relative judgment. And it certainly won't be true for all his students. For example, I was frustrated by his lack of giving actual self-inquiry technique. All that talking turns into mental masturbation very quickly without a clear, explicit practice method.

Ahem... Life purpose!

Of course, which is why I release a lot of videos about epistemology, paradigms, skepticism, naive realism, psychedelics, etc. Because the mind is blocked up by mainstream social thinking. Most people cannot even begin to hear true personal development teachings, let alone act to embody them. But you CAN do regular, dualistic self-help. It will be helpful to you, it just won't fix most of the deep root problems you have. So if you can stomach the nondual teachings and are willing to work harder with less immediate payoff, then that's your bet strategy. Like people who aren't yet ready to eat true health food, at least they can order the salad at McDonalds instead of the Big Mac. Most traditional self-help is geared to help people become more successful, not to actually become conscious of the truth. But without learning the truth, you're just running off of delusion, so your efforts at success will be delusional in the end. Because you got your priorities backwards. Truth must be priority #1 if you want the best results. But truth is a very acquired taste.

Working on understanding authentic relating would be an important aspect of going Green. Green is all about relationships.

No, evil is not still evil without a label. You're not appreciating how much you create reality with your concepts. Concepts and distinctions are not "just labels", they are the building blocks reality. For example, you were not born out of a vagina. "You" were created when the concept of self/other arose. Which makes you a concept. Not only is evil a concept. You are a concept. Your body is a concept. Reality is a concept. None of these things are a given. They had to be created. They are the paradigms which you created to exist in the reality you presently inhabit. Until you become aware of this, you will be a slave to them.

@PetarKa They don't really exist. Nothing really exists. The question of "existence" is very tricky. Existence itself is a projection! To create existence, you made a distinction between existence and non-existence. Without this distinction, there is no existence per se. Try to grasp that existence only appears to exist from your biased point of you. Because you occupy the realm of form, you are biased to seeing everything only in terms of forms. But right behind all the forms is the formless. When we speak of values for purposes of personal development, it should be clear that we're just using this notion of "people have values" as a conceptual framework to explain why people tend to behave in certain ways. It's a scientific model. And like all scientific models, it's just a metaphor. It's not true in any deep metaphysical sense.

Nothing is hidden, of course. The thing you're looking for isn't a thing at all, and it sits nowhere else but right under your nose, in plain sight. Nothing is "located" exactly in the same place as everything you see. That's why it's hard to discriminate it. BUT! Unless you're disidentified from that body/mind, you ain't got it. So yes, it's simple, but don't mistake that for you already grasping it. Chances are you haven't grasped it yet. And there are many depths of grasping it. When you finally do grasp it, there will be significant shift in your perspective. But don't take that to mean that you will start seeing Jesus, auras, and flying unicorns. Your perceptions will not change at all. The reason you're struggling here is because your entire reality right now consists of perceptions. And you're being asked to discriminate awareness out from perception. Which is not something we generally hold as possible, and we don't know how to do it. Awareness is not perception. But you are aware of perceptions. You're trying to become aware of awareness itself, which is tricky, because awareness has zero properties. So you cannot latch onto it with the mind. So yes, nothing is hidden. It's all right there in front of you. You're it! You're just not a perception or "a thing".

If your therapist is not working with you, hearing your agenda, then they're not a good therapist. A good therapist/coach should have no agenda of their own.

Just do it. Fear must ultimately be faced, not circumvented. Start by singing in your car.

@PetarKa You created a conceptual distinction called positive/negative. And you project it onto stuff. You could stop projecting that, and then things would stop being good/bad for you. Things would just be themselves.

Experience the Absolute, then let's talk. You speak of things your mind doesn't remotely comprehend yet. All of that above is LANGUAGE. Without language, there could not be good/evil. Like at all. You're creating concepts and distinctions of which you are not remotely conscious yet. If you're not willing to fully embrace Hitler as good, as God, as yourself, then spirituality isn't for you. And you might as well change your avatar picture away from that Buddha tree and Enso circle, because your position goes against the core of what the Buddha realized and taught. The Enso circle is a symbol for the totality of the Absolute. Which means: no distinctions. Which means, no separation between you, Hitler, God, love, and evil. There's not a circle with Hitler somehow magically sitting outside the circle because you happen to not like him. He's part of the circle no matter what you like. Your job here is to surrender your self-agenda. As Hitler's ego tried to put the Jews outside the circle, your ego is trying to put Hitler outside the circle. Committing the very same epistemic mistake. This is the source of what you call "evil". You're currently enacting it by not being conscious of it. The light of the Absolute will blot out all "your" beliefs and judgments, like the daytime sun blots out the stars.

@JustinS Further evidence that we really are just chimps

I have a good in the book list which gives you all the secret techniques in full detail.

I could almost contemplate touches of infinity at times on 10ug. It makes a very big difference how much philosophical foundation you've already developed from what I can see. And it makes a very big difference if you're actually sitting and contemplating vs running around doing everyday things. That's probably the single biggest problem with typical psychedelic users: they aren't actually contemplating anything, they're just taking the substance then wasting it while watching TV or browsing the web or dancing in a nightclub, expecting the substance to do all the work for them. The more conscious one becomes, the smaller doses one should need to have deep insights. That's my theory.

Did a microdose of 10ug just yesterday. It wasn't so subtle.

While it can be helpful to still the mind, it's certainly not necessary, and this idea that you must stop all mind activity to become enlightened can become a trap in itself. It's much harder to stop the mind than to become enlightened. The heart of the matter is that you must become conscious of what's what. Which does not require stopping thought. Although if you're stuck in monkey-mind, that will be an impediment.

@Revolutionary Think Yes, of course! Which is why the hero must go it alone. The hero's journey always starts with him leaving behind his comfortable social existence. In real life, that's not easy to do. Most people NEVER make it that far. Notice that in books and in movies the hero is almost always opposed by the villain who is a defender of the status quo (very often mainstream society or culture). The status quo always demonizes the hero, because that's what ego does to Truth. Ego must pervert Truth in order to maintain itself. It's a cosmic battle between Truth and illusion (Maya). And Maya has the upper hand because it's free to use dirty tricks whereas Truth must stay true. If all of society conspired to help you effortlessly attain Truth, a hero's journey wouldn't be necessary and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

@Elton If you did it once, why can't you do it again? You've already proven it's possible. And the second time around is actually much easier than the first. You're just backsliding, which is totally normal and you should really expect it. You just get back on track one thing at a time. You can't do everything at once. Pick your most important habit and work on it alone for the next month or two. Also, make sure that the changes you're making are sustainable. It does no good to running off bravado or pure will power. That's not sustainable. Also, use your backsliding to learn lessons about how your mind works. Analyze WHY you failed here. What trap did you fall into? How did you trick yourself?

They can be very helpful. But you'll still want a manual meditation practice.