Leo Gura

If that's true, how can you be sure you're not insane right now? Have you forgotten that THIS experience of reality you're having right now is determined by the brain? What if your brain is functioning ignorantly RIGHT NOW!? Hint: It is! You are mentally ill and you don't even know it. Your mental illness is otherwise known as materialism. Of course the whole trick with being afflicted with this illness is that you deny that you have it So take your own advice. The problem isn't that you're being too skeptical here, but that you're not being skeptical enough! You are blindly accepting your default level of consciousness. Which is a massive epistemic blunder.

A few pointers for you guys: 1) This question of whether oxygen is being increased or decreased is really irrelevant. Don't get hung up on that. What matters is if you feel the technique working for you. If you feel like it is harming you, then don't do it. For me, it feels healing. Obviously people can have all sorts of health conditions which might make this technique inappropriate, in the same way that running 2 miles on a treadmill is inappropriate for many people. But for most healthy people, it is healing. Medical doctors and academics can say all sorts of things. But the proof is in the actual doing of the technique. Do not listen to people who have not actually done the technique. Spiritual techniques tend to be hardcore. They can also be counter-intuitive, breaking conventional medical, physiological, and materialist paradigms. Case in point: most medical researchers still do not understand psychedelics for example, so don't expect them to understand a technique like shamanic breathing. With naive thinking, a doctor could easily classify running a marathon as unhealthy and physically dangerous, pointing to isolated factors like: "There is less oxygen in the blood than normal" or "There is more CO2 than average", "The muscles are producing lactic acid which is damaging to the body", "The heart beat is near heart attack levels", "The body temperature is near fever levels", "Dehydration is too high", "The immune system is under great stress", etc. This doesn't say much. Normality is no sign of health, and doctors usually just parrot whatever medical ideology they are subscribed to. They have zero spiritual understanding. Their understanding of human physiology is materialistic, crude, and linear. They have no sense of the subtle, energetic, psycho-somatic, or metaphysical aspects of human physiology. 2) Don't fall into the trap of mistaking difficult emotional and physical sensations as "negative" or a sign of physical damage. It's very easy for a noob to misinterpret muscle burn at the gym as a sign of physical damage, for example. A little bit of pain can make the ego come up with all sorts of excuses. Your shadow and emotional trauma are wired deep into your mind, brain, and body. Releasing this deep trauma can feel painful, uncomfortable, difficult, scary, etc. Negative emotions arising is a sign of HEALTH, not sickness. It means the technique is working just as it should. This is called spiritual purification, and any serious spiritual technique has the potential to release very deep, painful, and scary thoughts and emotions. Facing your own lies, delusions, and ego-death is not rainbows and butterflies. With that said, you need to learn to intuit how much spiritual purification you can handle at a time. Going overboard is not good. Make sure you only bite off as much as you can chew. 3) If 30 minutes of this techniques brings up a lot of physical challenges, pain, and emotions in you, then all that probably means is: you have a lot of emotional baggage to work through. For me, for example, 30 minutes of this technique feels intense, but there is no negativity, no pain, and little emotional baggage arising. For me, 30 minutes feels rejuvenating and empowering. It feels like an intense workout. Perhaps akin to running a marathon. 4) Don't judge a spiritual technique unless you've actually done it with an open mind. 5) Keep in mind, the ego is very sneaky. Any technique which directly threatens it, it will tend to demonize and reject. This is true of psychedelics and many other radical methods. 6) The more effective a spiritual technique is, the more challenging it will be, and the less your ego will want to do it. 7) Use common sense. Don't hurt yourself. Search your heart for whether this is healing or hurting you. As an example, after an intense workout at the gym, you should have a sense of whether you hurt yourself or strengthened yourself with that session. I am no doctor and this is not medical advice. You are 100% responsible for your own well-being. I like to practice hardcore and experimental techniques which may not be suitable for certain people. If you want to be 100% safe, then stick to 100% conventional materialist techniques (which basically means: no spirituality for you). Spirituality always involves some degree of danger and risk. You have to determine for yourself what you are comfortable with and how deep you're willing to go. If you think that meditation or yoga cannot get as intense as shamanic breathing, that's just because you've haven't really experienced hardcore meditation or yoga yet. And certainly this shamanic breathing is peanuts compared to a deep psychedelic session. I've done psychedelic sessions in which I've physically died. Good luck explaining that to a doctor. FYI, any technique that can produce ego-death or awakening is capable of eliciting in you deep fear and powerful emotions. Because are are literally facing your own death. That is no small thing. Spirituality takes courage, but also intelligence. Be fearless, but also don't do anything stupid like physically harming yourself. You can call it hyperventilation if you want. But then by that logic you can also call awakening insanity. So what? You could also call weightlifting: tearing of your muscles. And you could call sex: exposure of your immune system to foreign diseases. And you could call eating a slice of pizza: ingesting cancer-causing poison.

Yes, that's good. That's the only way really. You must doubt everything until nothing remains. Spirituality is like extreme skepticism taken to its ultimate conclusion, consuming everything, and even itself. Until only pure being remains. Trusting me is not what I ask you to do. I ask you to be skeptical of everything equally, especially of your self. You cannot trust anyone in this work. Not me, not any guru, not Buddha. You must discover what is true in your direct experience. Direct experience is all that really matters. My words are only here to motivate you to look more closely at your direct experience and question everything society has taught you. There are no authority figures. The truth cannot be spoken or proven to you. You must seek it out all alone. Make sure you don't mistake my talking for truth. All the ideas I fill your mind with are NOT the truth!

Perhaps so, but agenda isn't consciousness.

Lol, that's actually a major plus. The whole point is to lose your mind to the techniques and stop all this mental masturbation about theortical nonduality.

There are no guarantees, but Stan Grof has been teaching similar techniques for many years, with thousands of people participating. If it really damaged your brain, I'm pretty sure he would stop teaching it and people would have sued him long ago. The only way to know is to try it gradually for yourself. You will feel if it is hurting you or healing you. Just don't ask the question from a fear-based ego-mind perspective. I don't feel any damage from it. But you guys are all reporting unqiue experiences, so I can't guarantee your health. This is stuff that requires a willingness to experiment in a careful manner. What's nice about this techique is that you can make it as gradual as you like and stop at any time, unlike with psychedelics.

Hehe... You can't know until you achieve it. For all you know, everything I say could be a lie. Such is the nature of all breakthroughs. You cannot do research unless you are willing to assume the risk of deadends. Now you see why so few people discover the Truth. P.S. 1000 hours is actually a very small investment. You should be prepared to invest way more than that if you really care about knowing the origin of existence.

Any intellectual position that one is fond of and defends with rational arguments. A set of ideas or worldview that one is emotionally attached to, and in particular, thinks of as true and important. A personal philosophy or system of morals about which one feels righteous. An intellectual or philosophical agenda. All of that is delusions of the ego. There is a difference between people attacking you vs you "creating enemies." Enemies are a psychological creation of the ego-mind. People who attack you will of course always exist. A shark can attack you while you are swimming in the ocean. But that does not make him your enemy, unless you hold him as such. The mistake would be to go on an ideological crusade against sharks. That's the lesser Jihad. Be very mindful of anyone who you follow in the media who is waging an ideological crusade against anything. Notice that that entire thing is a distraction from consciousness. All ideology is antithetical to truth and consciousness. And there are many very subtle forms of ideology floating around. We're not talking about fundamentalist religion here. The ideologies you should be worried about are much more subtle.

@Omario Be careful. Ideology is not consciousness. All ideology is going to limit your growth. People such as Peterson and Sam Harris are actually ideologues. Which is why they develop sorts of cult followings. It's a modernized form of religion. People with strong opinions betray their lack of consciousness and understanding of reality. The more conscious you become, the less opinions and enemies you will have. Constant criticism, debating, and self-justifying are sure signs of low consciousness. If an ideology or worldview appeals to you, you should be extra wary of it.

The thread in this subforum about shamanic breathing was merged with the Shamanic Breathing Mega-Thread. Found here:

Since people will be asking all sorts of questions about it for weeks to come, let's aggregate them here. Post your questions, tips, and experiences with shamanic breathing here.

Start using your brain. You guys are getting way too spoiled.

There are hundreds of different ways to embody spirituality in your career aside from teaching. The reason your mind is stuck on teaching as the only option is because you're being lazy and not thinking outside the box. Monkey see, monkey do. Be more creative.

The answer to both turns out to be the same

@KMB4222 Being cannot have a mechanism. Being is amechanical. It's just Infinity.

@phoenix666 I'll shoot a vid about it in the future. You can do practices to open your heart chakra.

@Phrae Sit your ass down and self-inquire. Everything else is distraction. The only strategy that matters is that you actually turn inside and look at your direct experience. The rest is games. You can become enlightened sitting on your couch. If you would only discipline yourself and rivet your attention on: What am I?

That's right. Now carry it thru to the end.

Next, Sadhguru teaches Trump to be spirtual. After failing to do so, Sadhguru goes mahasamdhi.

@Empty Firstly, morality does not exist. You can do anything you want. Murder, rape, incest, drugs, genocide, racism... whatever. It is all part of reality and in fact an action of God. That is an extremely important point to understand. Until you understand this, you will never become deeply spiritual because you are not yet conscious of how your mind constructs these rules. If you reject evil, you in fact create evil. The solution to evil is to fully love it. The problem of exploitation is not solved with judgment or suppression, but LOVE! You want to realize and embody Divine Love. As your ego dissolves, what is left in its place is pure love for everything, and that's when your actions become truely moral. Morality is not about rules, it's about acting Good for no reason whatsoever, because it comes from your heart. Why would you want to use a girl for sex? Why not love her without necessarily marrying her? Sex is something you two can both enjoy. In fact, good sex is one of the greatest things a man can gift to a woman. Learn how to really please your girl in bed, and she will love you for it. Follow your heart, NOT rules from authority figures. Your heart is more powerful than all the rules in the world. When your heart is strong it allows you to overpower all of your selfish fearful egoic impulses. Rules are designed for heartless people.

@Paulus Amadeus 1) The world is not nearly as rigid and predictable as you think. Take 2 tabs of LSD and see for yourself. Or just consider your dreams at night. 2) Infinity includes an infinite number of predictable worlds. There is nothing you can think which is not found inside Infinity. You are hallucinating a predictable world. Which is no stranger than hallucinating an unpredictable world. 3) Infinity is beyond all thought experiments. So all of this is just mental masturbation. Infinity is a brute fact. You cannot argue with what is. You can only become aware of it, or fail to do so. A brute fact does not hinge upon your thought experiments or reasons. Your mind is trying to make sense of God, and that will never work.

If you still think God is something else than you, you haven't got it yet. It's best not to talk about God unless you have a direct experience of it. Quoting scriptures just doesn't cut it. Indeed, the only one you can worship or pray to is yourself. Whether you want to do so, it up to you. The ultimate egotism is thinking God is Infinite, but that that infinity somehow excludes you.

Depends on the teacher. Teachers are not all at the same level of realization. I've tried to get Ralston to try it but he declined and ridiculed it. I am worried about having an old man doing 5-MeO. Might kill him.

You should read Om Swami's book from my book list. It will clear things up for ya about how to become a monk.