electroBeam

true, those are excellent points.

The fact that I didn't know back then what I knew now was deliberate.

+1 I'd argue further that the loop is an appearance with no substance. That's almost, but not quite the same as saying the loop isn't there at all. There's just this non duality/duality paradox that I'm feeling about this whole thing that I can't put my finger on. Anyway I'm open to being full of it. Thanks for the replies!

If the character was more spiritually talented, that would be obvious. Strange loop much. I get what you're saying, but I was trying to get at something else. A holistic perspective where you see the value in duality and how it all connects together. Anyway thanks for the replies.

@Nahm I wasn't referring to talent specifically... Yes. What I'm trying to get at is... balancing non duality with duality. It doesn't feel right to totally discard every dualistic thought or understanding, even if in spirituality we are taught to let them go. In Zen, they tend to say that neither duality or non duality is true/false, they are both true and false at the same time, and I tend to resonate with that. As an extreme example, there is no you, yet we don't go to the tax man and say there's no one paying our taxes. And on the spiritual path, there is no you, yet its sometimes useful to assume there's a you when you're growing on the spiritual path. Like there's no you yet you're still assuming there's a you(or maybe not assuming there is a you but you're playing a character at the very least) to carry out your persona as a spiritual teacher helping others. So you're both holding the stance of there being no you, yet there is a you. And this is part of your spiritual journey, part of your growth. So there's both non duality (knowing the truth) and duality (playing the role of a spiritual teacher) happening at the same time, and on my specific journey I'm up to the stage of balancing them out. Not going so far as to say there's no spiritual teachers because there's no you, but at the same time not going so far (spiritual ego) as to say I am enlightened, I am a spiritual teacher, and I am this thing and that thing. You just triggered that question in me with your last paragraph so I'd thought I'd get your perspective on that. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ This is sort of related to spiritual talent too. Because even though there's no you and so comparing yourself to others doesn't make sense, paradoxically its also very useful to compare yourself to others in some instances... hence why Leo probably feels inclined to do so. For example, if you come to the conclusion somehow that you're less spiritually talented than Ramana Maharshi (I'm not saying its True, I'm just saying you come to that conclusion somehow) you'll also come to the conclusion that your meditation practice needs to be 1000x more rigorous than his, and THAT could help you on your journey, even though comparing yourself to ramana maharshi is completely stupid in a way because there's no you or him.

and to a them Yet, these imaginary facets of reality are sort of your scaffold to build off... like bootstrapping. I mean, you don't know what you believe. You're not aware of the deep beliefs lurking in the subconscious. And the spiritual path in a sense is revealing these beliefs. Which is not straightforward because you don't know they are there in the first place. And liberation is largely from revealing and letting go of these things. And we all have unique set of hidden beliefs, and while you and me aren't there, we are just appearances, comparing you and me is the right way can reveal these hidden beliefs. Like for example, figuring out the most effective meditation technique could mean comparing the techniques you use to me, even though we aren't actually there. And of course when you really break down what an 'effective' meditation technique is, it doesn't make any sense because there's no you, and you're not progressing or going anywhere because there's just THIS, yet paradoxically its necessary and useful for the path to find the most effective technique. Or you think that's ^^^^^^^^^^^^ BS. Feel like hearing your perspective on that.

+1 everything AND nothing.

I think as a compliment to what you've described about the shadow, you can also expand what you've written to also include ignorance and arrogance. For example, denying or covering up your arrogance with spiritual dogma actually inflames the issue, like what you've written, to overcome your arrogance means to give it respect. Same with ignorance, its very tempting to cover up 'what you don't know' with spiritual concepts and dogmas, when in reality you really just don't know. And the way to overcome that ignorance is to give it respect.

I get it, you think I'm just playing word games. The insight was, there's nothing wrong with feeling good about yourself. There's nothing wrong with feeling special, important, valuable or "standing out". Because the truth is you are special, important, valuable and stand out. Because that's what God is. The trick is, you don't have to reject those feelings to be God. The mistake is in projecting WHY those feelings are there. The ego gets those feelings and conjures up explanations for why its there, such as you are special because you're smarter than everyone else, or you're more spiritually advanced than everyone else. Inspect and separate the feeling of being special, from the ego's explanation of what that feeling means, and then you get God.

The importance of collapsing the spirituality vs career paradigm. And further, collapsing spiritual materialism vs minimalism. I've tried it, spiritual materialism doesn't work. BUT, so doesn't its opposite. The middle way, is the way. By leaning too far on the spiritual materialist paradigm, you end up abusing spiritual teachings to suit your own egoic agenda and minimising your ability to see reality for how it is. Leaning too far on spiritual materialism makes you unable to see the "free will is an illusion" insight, and makes you believe in wacky things like the ego can control the dream. This leads you into a false pretence and bastardisation of spiritual teachings and reality. For example, implying that law of attraction = you can attain whatever materialistic desires you want. No you can't because you're not in control of the dream. The other issue with spiritual materialism is the trap of chasing states and spiritual ideas, insights and dogmas to keep yourself happy, rather than the truth. For example, cherry picking what Love is. Love is a deep connection with a woman, but its not murder. Also Leo's obsession with attaining mystical insights is another example. But on the other side of the coin, completely rejecting materialism isn't good either. By rejecting materialism, you can fall into the trap of believing in false pretences about the world being cynical and pessimistic. You can believe that everything that feels good, is ego. That materialistic desires are ego, and must all be avoided. This can lead you into a dark state where you disconnect yourself from Love and Bliss, and replace them with cynical and pessimistic thoughts. In the name of being spiritual. Rejecting materialism also leads to suppressing desires like sex and fame and wealth. Which leads to the existence of dark shadows lingering in your system, and a inability to weed them out because you think it isn't spiritual to do so. The other problem with rejecting materialism is not seeing the God, Love, Bliss and Beauty in the universe. by rejecting materialism, you reject wealth and sex and fame. By rejecting those things, you judge them and even possibly hate them. This blocks you from seeing the beauty, love of those things and why they are there. The right way is the middle way, where you keep true to your sincere intentions as a seeker, and follow your commitment to see things the way they are, not the way your ego wants, but at the exact same time, you allow genuine materialistic desires to flourish, without indulging or being too attached to them. And you're open to and accepting of the Love, Wisdom, Truth of those materialistic desires and objects. The point is to be aware of the traps and consequences of materialism, especially spiritual materialism, but indulge and enjoy them anyway, up to a point that you ensure you aren't falling into any traps. Indulge and fully experience materialism, but always remember to be quite detached, open minded, wary of traps, and to ALWAYS keep the bigger picture in mind, the bigger picture in that everything that is materialistic is impermanent, transient, and all materialistic indulgence is meant for Being Truth, Love and Bliss. Allow materialism in, but never let down your guard of its dangers. And always assess whether the consequences of your actions are reaching a negative, counter productive/spiritual tipping point. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Reflection of desire: a trap. The buddha quote (paraphrased) of "don't forget to get off your raft before entering the island" is slightly misleading and nuanced. The raft being desire, and the island being enlightenment. Yes you gotta get off your raft to enter the island, and clinging onto your desire for too long is a big trap, but an equally big trap is getting off your raft before getting to the island, and bullshitting yourself into believing you're enlightened when you're not. My path has been highly ruthless, lots of anger, negative emotions, ego bashing. Its a deeply masculine path. And that's the way I like it, because it ensures I don't get off the raft before I reach the island. Infact, chucking away your desire for enlightenment too early, is a 1000x bigger trap than clinging onto your desire for too long. And that's because, if your desire is big enough, after some time, your desire will burn itself up purely because its unable to hold its own energy for too long. Its equivalent to slamming your raft into the island due to high velocity. Forcing yourself to get off the raft, not because you want to, but because you have to. This IMO is the ideal way to handle desire. Be so ambitious, so hungry, such a huge seeker, that you run yourself into the ground, completely and utterly burn yourself out. That way the ego has no chance of using the buddha's quote above to become satisfied with anything other than enlightenment, and bullshit itself into believing its enlightened when its not. But at the same time, you've got no chance of clinging onto desire, because you're burnt out. I use to be like others, and deeply value the wisdom of letting go of desire, but as I mature on this path, I see how desire for enlightenment and truth is everything in being successful on this journey, and too much desire is much much better than too little, even if enlightenment takes an extra few years and ample amount of depression more. Its better to be safer than sorry. I've fallen on both sides of this path, jumping off too quickly, and clinging onto desire. It takes desire to let go of desire At the beginning I jumped off too quickly dozens of times. Which lead to great pain once I had the rude awakening that enlightenment didn't happen. I then desired fiercely as a knee jerk reaction, and ran my raft right into the island, smashed it to pieces, and it took me a year to recover from being burnt out (or repairing my raft following the analogy). Yet as soon as the raft smashed, a huge turning point/awakening occurred. I've now been smashing my raft into multiple islands for the past year now, and life just gets better and better, and more and more growth occurs. An analysis that doesn't consider the downsides of a particular approach is just plain biased and dishonest, so it wouldn't be fair if I didn't mention that there's one big downside to ramming your raft into islands and smashing them to pieces (apart from the extreme depression, anger, basically negative emotions). There's a large recovery period that's required after your raft smashes to pieces. And a bit of trauma. That has to be worked out before setting sail again. Even though that downside is bad, its way better than getting off too early without realising it, or not getting off the raft after landing on the island IME, both of which have occurred with many other seekers, and have convinced me that the approach I'm taking is the best. Its just the hardest.

I think hating orange is a great opportunity to try to fully love and accept it the way it is. Try and love orange to bits. Once you've done that, then transcend it.

infinity of course

No way, speaking from experience. And my business is half based in Au

You do stand out, and you are more important, there's just no one you're more important than. The ego is simply twisting th importance of God to serve its agenda, but you are important.

My grandpa 'died' recently, had an amazing relationship with him, great guy. But feel absolutely nothing for his 'death'. Had huge pressure to feel deeply sad for him, but just couldn't. Pretended well enough though. I'm perfectly fine, this post isn't here because I feel depressed. Its here rather because the whole experience was rather... confusing to me. Meant to feel one way, but just don't to be frank. But everyone but me feels that way... the pressure, the thoughts saying "is there something wrong here?" Who knows, maybe this post wont get me anywhere, but thought I'd see what happens.

well if you have to do consciousness work to get it, then its not for free isn't it?

Gosh well lets hope its not already happening.

bro, how else are ya gonna be the new hip swami sadhguru bramahama

Feeling completely dead today, or equivalently feeling like everything is completely alive. I wonder how such a state like this would go with NN-DMT. Should try it.

Finding comfort = avoiding fear. What do you fear? Is that fear what it seems? Can you see the love that shines through that fear? Can you drop the fear? Can you recognise that the fear is lying?

I've read the books and looked up Leo's twisted definition of turquoise, and I'm still very confused on the differences between awakening and turquoise. You guys conflate the 2 a lot. Its almost impossible to tell the 2 apart. Based on traditional spiral dynamics literature, turquoise models a sociological (not psychological) value system which stands out from the rest on the value of holism. Its extremely large picture. You see the value and how everything connects together on an intuitive level. It differentiates itself from yellow in that its intuitive. You don't get lost in the mind, you feel how things are connected. The other difference is in yellow you primarily view things through hierarchies, structures, etc. How things are different to each other. In turquoise, the emphasis is in the connectedness, or how everything relates as one thing. Awakening, is when the matrix collapses. Its when the thing under the matrix (Love, Bliss, Wisdom) is revealed to you. Its when you see this entire thing as made of imagination or 'pixie, magical dust' instead of atoms. Its the deconstruction of ego and the world. Turquoise is about understanding the matrix, but not going beyond it. Awakening happens at all stages of the spiral, and doesn't correlate to different stages. Lastly, spiral dynamics was made by academics. So any reference to mysticism or supernatural stuff, or siddhis, etc. Was an invention leo made and stuck it on turquoise. There is no mysticism or eastern philosophy in the original spiral dynamics model. So as far as my understanding is concerned, you could be turquoise, yet as enlightened as Trump. I don't see any correlation at all to being turquoise, and being mystical. Mysticism is way beyond and on a completely different plane to spiral dynamics. And spiral wizardry isn't that useful to spiritual work anyway. Its only really applicable for getting groups of people cooperating together effectively. In terms of being happy, leave that up to eastern philosophy. So why do people here talk about turquoise and enlightenment, mystical and supernatural stuff so much? Why did Leo emphasise lots of supernatural and mystical stuff in turquoise when its got nothing to do with turquoise? Most supernatural people are purple btw. And green people like reiki healers. No where near turquoise.

Everything to do with women is coming from your genitals. You are into women instead of donkeys purely because of your genitals. Your spiritual ego begs otherwise. As said before, if you're aiming for infinite love, judging PUAs is not the way to go.