Leo Gura

@Echoes See my video about "flattening the illusion". The mind will come up with models. Your job is to resolve what those models actually are when flattened. Contemplate the question: What is a model? or What is a thought?

At the rate we're headed.

Nothing is hidden. When you meditate/self-inquiry, aim to drop all metaphors and models. They are all symbols but your aim here is non-symbolic awareness. You cannot get to the Absolute through symbols. It's hard because the mind is addicted to symbols. Nothingness is not separate from the present experience you're having.

Good work! Now the real work begins.

It's all a joke, until someone pisses in your soup

@Empty Just keep doing the self-inquiry work and keep doing personal development. It all fades in the long-run. In the short-run, shit will happen. Learn to see the arising of strong negative emotions on this path as evidence of spiritual purification.

@Hunter Arrington Every tradition has its pros and cons and depends on how you practice it. Comparing Buddhist vs yoga is a topic one could write an entire book on. So we can't get into it here. If all you study and practice is Zen, you will miss things. If all you study and practice is Yoga, you will miss things. If all you study and practice is Buddhism, you will miss things. Because these teachings are not aimed strictly at Truth and self-mastery. These are entire cultures more than just teachings! They come with baggage and biases. They are partial perspectives. They have a cultural agenda to uphold. There is a cultural ego at work in them, whether gross or subtle. Which is why I endorse an eclectic approach. Just don't lose focus too much.

@Not a shaolin monk There is no you to control anything. Control is an illusion. When you realize this, you'll be more at peace with whatever happens to happen. Enlightenment gives you nothing. You cannot use it for your egoic agenda (well, you can try, but you'll fail).

@Parki These substances are not a game. They will fuck you up badly if you treat them like a juvenile.

This image upload problem has been solved.

@PureExp I can see your About Me. Are you logged in? I don't think it shows unless you're logged in.

Do not go overboard with psychedelics. If you're not doing the self-inquiry work, all the psychedelics in the world will not get you to enlightenment. First priority: self-inquiry .... Fifth priority: psychedelics. Make sure you don't get this backwards.

This is a known issue that I'm working to fix.

A) You should not be concerned with what's easy or hard, but with what's authentic to your values and passions. B) Every career has its unique career perks and downsides. C) A lot of the stuff I do for this career is unrelated to my personal growth and actually slows me down. You never see what goes on behind the scenes. D) Yes, there is a nice synergy between teaching and learning. When you teach, you learn the material much deeper. Strategic thinking is a good thing. If you want to master meditation, for example, it would be smart to become a meditation teacher. That's why the whole point here is to take the ONE THING you love the most, and turn that into your career. Then you've literally got nothing better to do. Every hour of your life you're doing the thing you love the most! Wouldn't that be a thing worth architecting?

I will cover this in a future video.

@Feeble Dave All those things are enhanced when they're used properly.

No, but perhaps they could become sentient if the mechanics of the design were correct. You probably wouldn't think of a virus as sentient, but you (mankind) supposedly evolved from something like a virus. It's not fair to compare 100 years of computer evolution with 2 billion years of human evolution. My current theory is that given that everything is one substance -- consciousness -- this one substance, if enfolded in on itself in the right ways, will create sentience. The question then would be, what is the correct type of enfoldment? One enfoldment creates a rock, another enfoldment creates a virus, another enfoldment creates a tree, another enfoldement creates a human baby, another enfoldment creates Skynet, another enfoldment creates a demigod, etc.

Even if that's the case, that doesn't mean a computer cannot develop sentience just as biological machines (humans) have. Don't create it artificially. Create it genuinely

Once you realize that everything is consciousness, including the sidewalk, your coffee table, and your PC, you might be more open to the possibility that a PC can develop self-awareness. From my current understanding, consciousness can involve itself to create anything. Of course a self-aware computer will probably not be one running Windows. It will have to be much more sophisticated. This issue is an open question. We simply don't know yet whether it is or is not possible.

@kuwaynej A few hairs of the ox's tail

@Ramu 5-meo is very very rare. It's very difficult to extract from plants, and production of it was banned in China in 2015, which has led to a world-wide shortage. The market for 5-meo is very small to begin with because it's not a recreational experience so demand for it is low. There are many other "lesser" psychedelics worth exploring which are much easier and cheaper to get: LSD, mushrooms, N,N-DMT, mescaline, etc. See my blog for a full list. You're better off getting your feet wet with the lesser ones any way. They are still extremely powerful and life-transforming. Always start with tiny doses and do copious research before you ingest anything. Yes, don't do salvia without a sitter because you lose motor control on it. Most other psyches aren't like that and can be done safely by yourself if you know what you're doing.

I want to keep the forum tight. If we have too many sub-forums, discussions get diluted, critical mass isn't reached, and the whole forum starts to feel like a ghost town. If we have a lot members discussing psychedelics, we can create a sub-forum for it. But for how, this setup is best.

It's not strange at all when you realize what Absolute Infinity is. It's ABSOLUTE, and it's INFINITE. Which means... EVERYTHING! There's nothing left unexplained. EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING! Because there's nothing to stop it. Your mind cannot comprehend this, because the mind thinks in terms of limits. You still assume reality has limits. It doesn't.

Yes, ego will find a way to twist every spiritual fact to serve it's self-agenda. Cause that's what egos do. And they don't care about how they do it. If they can co-opt lofty "spiritual" ideas, all the better. Who would think of questioning an ego that was acting in the name of God or Jesus or Buddha or "decency"? Perfect cover for the ego from doing self-inquiry. The whole point of religion -- and all ideology really -- is to avoid self-inquiry. It's been honed for this function for over 2000 years, and it does a damn fine job of it.

From my experience, people under 25 years old are not mature enough to get value out of coaching. And getting coaching on someone else's dime is problematic. Part of the point it that you're willing to invest in yourself.