Leo Gura

You blindly believe other people exist. 99% of all your beliefs are blind faith. So what's one more gonna do? No one is asking you to believe in chakras. Yoga is a practice. You do it and see what happens. It's like looking inside a microscope. No one cares what you believe. You just look in the damn thing with enough openmindness to accept whatever shows up. It might take you a few years of looking to really see what's there. In the meantime, be radically openminded. Notice, you never asked this question about all the current nonsense you believe. You just swallowed it gullibly. You never asked: "Why should I believe in the number 5? Does it really exist?" 99% of the things you think exist, don't. So what? Somehow you are still able to wake up in the morning and get things done.

@WorknMan That's not contemplation, that's mental masturbation. Contemplate that which is in your direct experience, like, What is suffering? And stop infecting your contemplations with scientific concepts. You have never seen estrogen. You may as well be talking about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You are not being asked to quantify anything. Looking at what a thing is is not the same thing as quantifying it. These are two very different activities.

Right I visualize the prana flowing up to the crown chakra (very top of the skull). And that's where I try to focus. Although sometimes I just defocus instead of focusing up there. I don't count anything. I keep track of my pranayamas using the fingers on my hand. 4 fingers x 3 parts each = 12 = 1 set of pranayama. Use the thumb to point to each part of the fingers. I am not doing Navi or Om Japa as they take too much time and my routine is already over an hour long. I prefer to do more pranayamas instead. Navi might be good later on if you feel like you have an energy block in your 3rd chakra.

@Timotheus The entire universe is infinitely intelligent. Look, it's reading this sentence right now and understanding it! But that's just the tip of the iceberg of how smart the universe is. It was smart enough to create itself. Think about that for a moment. Then notice, you are the universe thinking about how it created itself! It really helps to reframe your entire metaphysics of what reality is. Rather than thinking of reality as a dumb box of bouncing balls, think of it as an infinitely intelligent disembodied mind. Once you make that reframe, it's no longer puzzling that the universe should be intelligent. Intelligence is just fundamentally what minds do. The universe was not born as dumb matter. It was born fully intelligent. Because that's what reality is! There is no option for reality to dumb, other than by acting stupid through application of infinite intelligence to trick itself. Rather than thinking of the universe as a thing which starts out at 0%, think of it as a thing which starts out at 100% and dumbs itself down. So it's not that intelligent apes evolved, but rather than infinite intelligence was dumbed down to create apes, ants, humans, etc. Imagine that God is a really good method actor playing an ape. That's you! The method actor is so good he can dumb himself down to any level below infinity, precisely because he is infinitely good. Another way to think of it this: try to imagine why the universe wouldn't be infinitely intelligent. And then realize, there's nothing that would stop it. So it became infinitely intelligent. And here we are. Everything exists because there is no one to enforce any rules upon reality. So reality overflows into an infinite number of directions and dimensions. When you realize that dumbness is equally as impossible as infinite intelligence, you'll understand why infinite intelligence exists. The question you should really be asking yourself is: Why did I ever assume the universe was dumb? Your mind might protest: "But how was intelligence created?" To which you should tell it: "But how was dumbness created?"

That's not a rule, that's a loose generalization. Careful not to turn Maslow (or any model) into a limiting belief.

@see_on_see Gamana's techniques are very condensed Kriya. The original Kriya involves visualizing prana moving up and down the spine, which I think is very important. Just breathing while focusing one the 3rd eye or crown is not good enough for me. It feels more powerful to focus on moving the prana up the spine. But that's my take. You could be different. Gamana's books are not designed to teach you Kriya from scratch. They are designed for people who are already well-versed in the core practices. The original Kriya book I recommended is important.

Do your pranayamas slow and deep. When you get good, one inhale should last like 30 seconds, then 30 seconds for the exhale. You want to slow your breath down as much as possible. In certain meditative traditions they try to slow down the breath down to 1 breath per minute. That's sorta the goal here. Make each breath count. Really visualize & feel that prana flowing up the spine, through each chakra and up the brain stem. That's the key IMO. You are rewiring the brain stem, the reptilian part of your brain which keeps egoic consciousness locked in. As your practice improves your breathing should slow down and deepen, your visualization should become more clear and precise and filled with feeling. Practice slowing down your intake of air as much as possible, and practice perfecting your visualization. That should give you 80% of your results.

I would just start it where you're at, and you will work up to 90 seconds pretty easily within a month of practice. Don't let perfectionism get in the way of learning the practices. Tis better to do yoga poorly than not at all. Within a few months all of these complicated-seeming techniques will become second-nature.

@PhilGR You're not going deep enough yet. You still haven't realized the depth of the question you are contemplating. Wipe the slate clean and start your contemplation on this question again. Do that every day for 7 days and see what happens. You could contemplate that question every day for the next year and still not exhaust it.

@Girzo Sounds like you burned it. There is a fine line between smoking and vaporizing. Proper vaporization is tricky to acheive. Which is why I prefer plugging. Placing the 5-MeO on some herb (not weed but something neutral like mullein) will make vaporizing a lot easier. A glass pipe like the Glass Vapor Genie is ideal for that. I'm doubt 5-MeO will vaporize in a cheap electronic vaporizor.

Infinity contains all finities. So here you are. Infinity cannot stop itself. It creates every possible thing, to infinity. Like an infinite runaway chain reaction.

@Serotoninluv After 30 mins of contemplating you should have at least 2 full pages of writings. I usually ponder for a minute, then write a bit down. Then ponder for another minute, then write a few more sentences. Etc. You can write quite a lot once you're on a roll. But be careful not to write blindly without contemplating. Your writing must be grounded in direct experience, or it will devolve into spectualation and grand theory-building. Don't just ponder in your head, also ponder on the page.

Content and context are actually distinct things. But that is a challenging topic for another day. In that video I didn't actually get into what context is. I only defined it loosely for the purposes of explaining the phenomenon of recontextualization. To really understand context, you will have to contemplate: What is context? It's a lot more profound than people realize. In the ultimate end, everything is ONE, but it is very good to look at context in isolation.

No marketing trick. I was very fat. But I don't have any photos. My Mom does. I keep forgetting to ask her for one. I'll post it on the blog someday. When I do, you guys will not believe your eyes.

@kieranperez Great example. Notice how differently Deepak responds to Trump vs the way Green might respond to Trump: by hating Trumping. Green hates on haters. Turquoise loves on haters. That's a very significant paradigm shift and takes a lot of consciousness, development, and selflessness to embody. Green is not there yet. Green's ego is still too triggered by Blue/Orange to see the bigger picture.

Just hanging around Green people, or even just listening to Green people can be very helpful for outgrowing Orange. Check out the Youtube Channel, Majority Report. They are very Green and love to ridicule Orange. Just be careful not to get trapped in Green.

That's where the hard spiritual work begins. That's why you have Vipassana, yoga, Actualized.org and all these other "silly" practices and theories. It's easy to feel spiritual for 10 hours on 500ug of LSD. The real trick is grounding that level of consciousness into everyday life. Are you still gonna think it's silly when someone pisses in your soup? How about when someone rapes your Mom? That is the real test of your development. How conscious will you be then?

It's weak sauce. A drop in the bucket compared to the power of Kriya. His online course is mostly just meant to recruit new people. It's not going to transform your life. That's not so say it is bad. You just have to understand that the reason I chose Kriya was because it is the most potent thing I could find. It's yoga on steroids. With the size of Sadhguru's organization, he cannot teach the most powerful techniques to noobs. He has to teach weak mainstream techniques as introduction. I'm sure he also has powerful techniques, but you won't get those without jumping through all the hoops. The popular a spiritual teacher or teaching is, the weaker it must be. The best teachings are very niche and they are not advertised on YT to mouthbreathing noobs.

Definitely I feel like I'm on a mild psychedelic high throughout the day if I just sit still for a minute. Kriya is like microdosing psychedelics. It also significantly calms the monkey mind. It only takes a month or two to start to feel that. At least for me. Your results may vary. I have done a lot of psychedelics over the last 2 years, so I am much more conscious than I would be if I was starting Kriya from zero. Don't recall exactly which book it is from. I think it's the Kriya Supreme Fire. You basically just breath in, do the 3 locks, then hold it for 90 seconds (or as long as you can).

When I speak of contemplation, it includes conceptual understanding. Be careful about reduce contemplation to "just sitting in silence". That is not contemplation, that is meditation. Which is great, but not the same thing as what I described in my latest contemplation video. When you question something like "What is science?" that is CONCEPTUAL! Just sitting in silence will not result in a deep understanding of how science works, for example. Be careful about boiling contemplation down to being in a nondual state. One way to think of contemplation is that it is a way of cleaning up and clarifying your conceptual understanding. Which can be very valuable in and of itself. Without contemplation the mind is very confused and murky. Be careful, people can use the word "contemplation" to mean very different things.

@Widdle Puppy I like to think of it as two phases: Exploration phase: where you learn about and sample lots of various methods. Little results but lots of options and new ideas. Consolidation phase: where you get serious, buckle down, choose a few methods to master, and get to work. Lots of results but kinda boring and grindy. Both are important.

Sure Although don't make contemplations always about you. That in itself can sorta feed the ego. Make sure you're also contemplating things which are not directly about you, like, what is language?

By that logic, you should stop doing meditation too. Don't go to amateurs for advice on psychedelics. You might as well be asking Sadhguru for golfing advice.

It's a nice start, but not nearly deep enough. It's still mostly intellectual understanding and the ego is still in near total control of your consciousness. Keep questioning deeper until you stop feeling like you're inside the body or the head. Until your heart starts to pound in terror at the prospect of death. And then keep questioning even deeper until you actually die. In self-inquiry your job is nothing short of collapsing all of physical reality. Keep questioning until the floor beneath your feet disappears. This is a level of questioning most people do not think is possible. It should get very intense. It requires enormous presence and focus. Focus like you intend to burn a hole through a steel plate with your mind. But at the same time also be gentle. Don't strain yourself.

Why you asking us? Go contemplate it!