Leo Gura

@Whywolf Try using your imagination, for starters. Imagination is a powerful tool.

@RossE Many people doing psychedelics are teens or highly neurotic individuals, taking impure substances, of unknown quantity, in party settings, with alcohol and weed, with zero knowledge of personal development, philosophy, or spirituality.

@cle103 Well... firstly, you should be doing this work when you're MOST ALERT, not groggy and half-asleep. You need to be CONSCIOUS! This cannot be done as a mechanical process. Every time you sit down to contemplate, you gotta start from scratch. Take nothing for granted. Pretend like every time is your first time and you know nothing of the past. Also, be very careful about contemplating this stuff. You need to hit a state of genuine not-knowing. So stop pretending like you know what you are. You don't. Take your own inquiry seriously. If you can't find yourself, don't assume, "Oh, well, I already knew that." No you didn't! You have to create a possibility that there's something NEW to discover about this situation. When you inquire, get very real with yourself. Cut all the stories, ideas, concepts, beliefs, assumptions. Cut all that crap and just get to the bottom of what's ACTUAL in your direct experience right now. ACTUAL! ACTUAL! What is ACTUAL right now? Where are you? What are you? Notice that you don't know. Which means, you could be a flying spaghetti monster and not know it. Take such considerations seriously. The doubt has to be real, not just an intellectual exercise. Get yourself to actually doubt that you are a human body, so much so that you detach from the body. It's doable. After all, you're not that human body. All that attachment is, is an unquestioned belief. Be patient and persistent. These beliefs are so deep they can take months or years of questioning to erode. Strong psychedelics can give you a quick peak at the truth and catalyze your inquiry. Getting that first glimpse is very important to keep you motivated in this work.

@unknownworld Hence the need for radical openmindedness. The fact is you don't know. I don't know either. There is no birth and death. And there is birth and death. Reality is a tricky thing, and it can be talked about at various levels. There is also much more to spirituality than enlightenment. You can see everything from devils to angels. Imagine spawning your own private devil.

Not weird at all. Sprinkling holy water on a devil burns him. (It won't feel spiritual to him.) Sprinkling holy water on a saint delights him. Psychedelics mirror your own mind back on itself. If you have an impure mind, you may have an impure trip. You can't fake high quality consciousness. The psychedelics will help purify you, but that won't necessarily feel good. Psychedelics expose who you are at the BEING level, beneath all your masks and acts. This may not be a pretty sight at first.

@Whywolf Can you see what's underneath them?

There's nothing as rewarding (or challenging) as working for yourself, in my opinion. Large corporations are generally NOT serving higher-consciousness values.

That's the dirty world of affiliate marketing. I would focus on your life purpose vs chasing sales.

Topic locked because it goes against our guidelines of not discussing conspiracy theories. This is counter-productive to our overall purpose of turning inward and developing ourselves.

There are several aspects to balance. Yes, of course you'll have to focus and use a divide-and-conquer strategy for major life goals like family, relationships, career, enlightenment, etc. Which is not to say you can't cook several things using multiple burners. But the diagram wasn't really talking about that. The diagram represents how you will end up reconciling certain dichotomies which will inevitably come up for you in life. For example, how will you reconcile capitalism vs communism? Or success vs spirituality? Or using psychedelics vs not using psychedelics? The problem here is not merely one of how to allocate your time and energy. The problem goes deeper, in that you don't actually know what's right. For example, you probably don't know which areas of mysticism are wrong and which areas of science are wrong. That's gonna require reconciling.

Not necessarily. In this case, it sounds like there's an avoidance of socialization. Meditation could easily become a patching up of stuff too. For example, one might think, "I don't need a job. I'll just meditate all day." And that would be rather irresponsible unless you really know what you're doing. If you take a look at some of the most hardcore yogis, they're great at socializing.

@see_on_see I see too many folks here being epistemically cocky. Gotta humble them somehow. There needs to be a complete submission to EVERYTHING I BELIEVED ABOUT REALITY WAS WRONG.

Good, but keep in mind that 200ug is only the start.

@RossE That was only the tip of the iceberg. You've haven't seen the real God yet.

@Sukhpaal Be more social. But also keep meditating. Don't try to use meditation to avoid real-world action. That's misuse of meditation.

@Thanasi It's like you're trying to judge how great a wine is without ever having tasted wine. Taste a dozen wines first, then maybe things will become clearer.

@Bubba66 The self's purpose is survival, not truth or consciousness. You might as well ask, "Why don't people like shooting themselves in the head?" To pursue consciousness is to voluntarily kill yourself. You're not aware yet that that's what you're really embarking on here. If you become aware of it too soon, you'll stop. You still think it's just a cute metaphor. Wait till you discover that it's not a metaphor.

@unknownworld Go do a past-life regression therapy and find out what it's about. Spirituality is not a thing to speculate about. It's a thing to be empirically done. If you want to know what an apple tastes like, you must go eat an apple. Try taking 1000ug of LSD or 30g of mushrooms and see what happens. Then come back and report it to us. You are an individual right now, so not sure why it doesn't make sense. If you've had some direct consciousness, it's only been skin-deep.

@Dino D You've never seen the dog (because it isn't there). The problem is you keep telling yourself, "I've seen the dog." How do you know you're not a coffee table? Think about this issue of identity real hard. What determines identity?

@unknownworld You're getting lost in theory. You are not going to understand this by philosophizing about it. Sit down and OBSERVE yourself. That is the only way. You believe you exist. Now find yourself! What are you?!!!!!!

Now notice, that's all thought. You actually believe you're a thought. Which is the silly part of your logic. A knife does not know its a knife. A knife does not exist to itself. You say you are the perceiver, and yet when you look, no perceiver is ever found. Which means, you believe in a fairytale. If I told you I had a dog, and you said, "Okay, show him to me." And I responded, "Oh, I've never seen him. But I love him very much. He's in the house somewhere. After all, there's no way he could be nothing. That's silly. Can you imagine a Nothing-dog? Hahaha... how silly!" You'd rightly call me crazy.

Sure, those are all pretty standard facets of spirituality which have been practiced for millennia.

@d0ornokey Dude, you can overcome the fear of DEATH! What you're talking about is shallow peanuts compared to what true growth can conquer. Time to roll up your sleeves.

@d0ornokey What is your specific obsession?

@unknownworld Atman is Brahman, Brahman is Atman. You're getting ahead of yourself. Have a direct experience of Atman first. Then have a direct experience of Brahman. Then things will be clear.