Leo Gura

Anxiety is normal, you just have to stop thinking and do it anyway. It really helps if you learn to completely shut off your mind during the approach. But this requires a lot of training. You won't be able to do it as a newbie. During approach your greatest enemy is your own mind. So shutting it down is the key.

Do you understand that it usually takes an intellectual years to develop and publish ground-breaking new theory? Go look at how long it took Darwin to develop evolution.

Your question is far too general to have a proper answer. It all depends on your place in the world and your situation. And there are many trade-offs. Somethings are better and some things are worse. Income inequality has gotten worse, for example. But technology has gotten so much better. The tools for making stuff are so much better: like software and hardware.

I'm not venting, I'm pointing out traps to you and to science.

Because a scientist like Penrose will himself admit that he is interested in solving these deep existential questions. It's not like I forced Penrose into this. P.S. I hate you

That's not what the apology sounded like. It sounded like he was apologizing for being forceful with her.

@Jodistrict How do you explain Russell's own texts apologizing to the allegedly raped girl the next day?

He's not smart about the Christianity part. Just because Roger Penrose is wrong doesn't mean Christians are right. The only thing that Christians are right about, pretty much, is that God exists. The rest is their human BS.

I don't have a sex trafficker shadow. I just recognize that sex trafficking is a crime and causes needless suffering. You make it sound like I'm out there hunting sex traffickers with a bow & arrow. Any decent person understands that what Andrew Tate was doing is deeply unethical and problematic, and should not be allowed in society.

Seems like AI will be dominated the by big corps from the start. So that's a bad example.

What I loved most about the 90s ans 00s was the rise of computers and the internet. The days before the internet was dominated by tech giants, there seemed like endless opportunity for the little guy. Many of those opportunities are gone now.

It is a medical fact that gay men get HIV way more. In the US 65% of all HIV cases are from gay men.

Good, but if your dose wasn't actuallt 3.5g because you had tolerance from the day before. So effectively this tolerance lowered your dose, which is probably why you had a good trip. So next time you trip keep your dose around 2g.

@Peo Yes, this can happen. Next time lower your dose to 2g. A) It takes experience to learn to control your trips. B) Sometimes a trip will go sour for no good reason. C) One bad trip means nothing. It's still possible to get all the good stuff you seek from mushrooms.

@Florian @Princess Arabia You two just have different perspectives. Avoid personal attacks.

Even more important than ending your biases is firstly just becoming aware of them. You can also end some of them after that.

There is nothing mature about letting a rapist off the hook.

He didn't mask it, he legit matured and developed a lot. He wasn't into spirituality back during his raping years. He was a heroin addict. Considering how bad he used to be, I'd say he made a good recovery. Assuming he stopped the raping.

That's a good point. I always assumed it would be more traumatizing if rape was from a stranger, but I'm not a girl so I don't know.

It is in fact legally recognized that drugging and raping is much worse. Danny Masterson was just convicted of that and he was given a harsher sentence due to the fact he drugged girls. The rapes of Danny Masterson seem way worse than what Russell Brand did. Which is why I brought up this idea of degrees.

@Princess Arabia So for you all rape is identical? Consider the case of degrees of murder. You might say: But if you ask the murder victim what difference does it make to him which degree of murder it was? It's all the same. And yet, we still distinguish degrees of murder. For example, I think rape with a weapon should count as a higher degree of rape. And you could make a distinction between sober vs intoxicated rape. Violent vs non-violent rape. And so on.

Just ask any woman, would you rather be raped by your husband or by a stranger in a dark alley, and you will see the clear difference.

Definitely. It's not nearly as bad. Couples can make each others upset or cry and even be forceful. I'm not justifying it. I'm just saying reasonable minds can see degrees of rape like degrees of murder.

You're not going to end them.

No! Consciousness is always in some state. The only question is how deeply it comprehends itself. Low states cannot comprehend themselves. So when you sit in meditation you don't actually comprehend what God is, even though you can even feel like you have some sense of God. That sense is 1% of what it could be. 1) That's not what these people are doing. 2) Higher consciousness can be so high that you will not be able to function as a human. That is the whole point. You must recognize that your very human life is an obstacle to you being consciousness. If you want to be a human you will not be highly conscious by definition. So everything these nondual people are talking is just consciousness within a narrow band which is compatible with human life, morality, and sanity. So they can keep selling you satsangs, books, and meditation techniques. If you become conscious enough you will start to lose your sanity. That's proper consciousness. For me the point is understanding of reality/myself. Yes. Comprehending reality requires seeing through various illusions. I don't know how to answer that. It's a values question. It's up to you to decide what you want out of life. It's possible for you to dip your toe in the pool and judge for yourself how deep you wish to go. You don't have to dive into the deepest part of the pool head-first. In fact, that's not really even possible without a big over-dose. My top priority has been simply being as conscious as I could be. So that's what a pursued and it naturally led me into some crazy realms. I agree with you there. But that's a mild form of consciousness. You're not going to be able to live life at the levels of consciousness which I am talking about if you were in them 24/7. A human cannot be in them 24/7. Don't even start with this nonsense.