The idea that Trumpists think Trump does anything out of altruism -- "for the good of the people" -- rather than to increase his ego, is laughable.
Trump's only motivation, ever, is whatever most benefits him personally.

It's more accurate to frame it as: consciousness can suffer, but it doesn't have to.
Suffering is just one of an infinite number of things that can be held within consciousness, like the color red, or a bird, or time. Consciousness can hold it, or not hold it.

Girls often fall in love for douchey asshole deadbeat guys who can't keep a job, but they give the girl emotional stimulation and adventure. That is sort of the player stereotype. The manwhore
I bet that a lot of professional women in their 30's and 40's who work boring corporate jobs but make good salaries would kill to have a player boyfriend who fucks her real good and provides her an outlet to be playful and go on adventures.
Girls just wanna have fun and feel their feminine side. Which the proper guy can do for her. That's when she falls hard in love, and he can then exploit her emotional soft spot for him.

All identity is relative.
But of course biology plays a huge role. You identify as human because of your biology. Although of course "human" is still a relative, imaginary, constructed identity.
But it makes more sense for you to identify as human than as a kangroo.
Yes, relativity is easily abused.
We have them. But all agreed upon rules will be challenged and questioned, which is what is happening.
The fantasy is thinking that we can agree on some rules and that's the end of the story. All rules must evolve and all rules have exceptions.
Conservatives love to play the game of agreeing to some rules and then pretending that these rules were not merely an agreement but objective reality handed down by God.

@Craigxt22 Mushrooms can be more challenging than 5-MeO. 5-MeO is very straight forward. It doesn't screw around.

It is a fact that you can be more conscious than you currently are.
End of story.
Everyone is in the present moment, but that doesn't mean everyone is equally conscious of it.
I'm sick of arguing against this neo-Advaita over-simplified shit which refuses to acknowledge differences in consciousness.
Just because you are surrendered to the present moment does not mean you are deeply conscious of anything.
What I care about is CONSCIOUSNESS, not surrender and not liberation and not freedom from suffering and not lack of ego and not some permanent condition. But CONSCIOUSNESS!
It makes no difference to me how long it lasts or what its consequences are.

This is a phony distinction. Whether a state "sticks" or doesn't is completely irrelevant from the POV of truth/reality. This is a criteria that you -- the ego-mind -- is placing upon the situation. Who says that a thing must be permanent for it to be valid or true? The mere fact that it can exist, even for 5 seconds, is enough. Nothing sticks forever. Even your so-called Buddha-level enlightenment will eventually be lost as God will fall asleep at some point after it awakens. Otherwise there wouldn't be any asleep people in the first place.
And yes, some people do have "permanent" states which are very different than all the classical ones you know or could ever access via meditation. Your "permanent" state totally hinges on your neurology, genetics, and brain chemistry. If we tweak your brain to start pumping out new chemicals, you will be permanently living in a new reality. Well, as long as you're in that body.
In the not too distant future we will have a Neurolink-like device which will be installed in your brain which will consistently pump out whatever cocktail of neurotransmitters you want, and you will be able to dial in your baseline state of consciousness to whatever you want. Such a device will be the most important and revolutionary technology that mankind has ever invented.

It's crucial that you address those root issues. Modafinil can give you focus and a mood-boost but it cannot correct for metal toxicity if you got it.
You can start doing heavy metal chelation without many tests, and just see if you feel better from it.

@WHO IS Don't worry, that's where life will end up.
If you really want to go there permanently, just set that intention on your deathbed.
But also, don't be too much in a rush to get there. Enjoy the dream.
Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
And the grass is always greener on the other side. Once you're there, you'll want to be back here.
There is a good reason why you're here. To experience here. Don't take here for granted. Every corner of God is worthy of exploration.

By definition, Infinite Love Forever cannot have any form or person there. It feels a lot like if you were physically merged with every living being in the universe to the point where all of you became an undifferentiated soup of Love. It's like entering a black hole of Love from which there is no desire to return. You give up the desire to have any concrete personhood or form so that you could merge for fully with every part of the universe.
It's like having an infinitely long, infinite intensely orgasm that is so intense that it kills the body and just keeps going forever beyond the body because the body cannot contain so much Love. It is literally an Endless Ocean of Love in which all memory of having been a human or a person is lost. That is God in its purest form. But this degree of Love is not possible for humans because they choose to be finite and separate from things.
Imagine becoming ONE with a chainsaw. That's real Love

The biggest thing money buys is not happiness, but freedom to not be someone else's bitch.
Being someone else's bitch can make you very miserable.
But once you stop being someone else's bitch, life will still be difficult and full of new challenges. Now you gotta grapple with the biggest challenge of all: not being your own bitch.

You are doing it right, but this is just the early phases of self-inquiry.
For self-inquiry to get serious, now you have to keep focusing awareness on awareness itself while quieting the mind down so it just rests on the awareness of awareness without moving. And just sit like that for as long as you can.
It takes lots of training. The "What am I?" question should become internalized, so to speak, such that it doesn't need to verbalized non-stop. You just sit in silence and focus the awareness of awareness.
Or just take a psychedelic.

You can frame it that way if you want. There are various ways of framing it.
I make no distinction between the field and Brahman, Self and no-self.
In the end there is only ONENESS. Slice it up however you want. People will naturally slice it up in different ways, which will cause disagreements.
But I sometimes notice that people dismiss the important of the transparency or opaqueness of the field. Which I think is a big disservice to students. The transparency/opaqueness matters a lot in practical terms. The point of all spiritual work is to increase transparency.

No it isn't. It's still all one consciousness.
Light is not turned into two substances by increase or decrease of intensity.
If you want to be a stickler and insist on pure, absolute, unmitigated nonduality, then you can become the Godhead itself, which is just formless infinite consciousness which increases in intensity forever without end. But at this point your human life will be gone, as will the entire material universe.

Consciousness is an infinite field which is capable of being more or less conscious of itself, more or less transparent or opaque to itself. Similar to the light in empty space. You can have very little light or you can have our sun, or something that's 1 million times brighter than our sun. All of that is the same light, but many degrees of brightness.
An ant is definitely not conscious that it is God.
Children are definitely not conscious that they are God.
99.9% of adults have no consciousness of what God is.
But you could become God-conscious. This takes some doing. It isn't your natural state. Your natural state is a state of humanness.
This infinite field of consciousness, because it is unlimited, is capable of dialing itself down from infinity to some finite consciousness, like that of a rock. When God is dialed down to a rock, God isn't aware that it is God.

100s of times. And I know I am God regardless if I just put a bit of attention on it.
Welcome to life, buddy! Where health easily deteriorates for many factors outside your control.
Every buddha loses his health and dies at some point. It's only a question of time.
Ramana Maharshi died of cancer.
By your logic he was some sort of fool for getting cancer.
They have for now. But I am working on healing myself. Health can wax and wane. Be careful with jumping to simplistic conclusions. Correlation does not equal causation. Self-development is not what caused my health problems.
Unawakened people die of diseases all the time. By your logic, why would anyone want unawakening?
It is the truth. If it is misleading that is because people simply don't bother to understand it and do the necessary work.
I'm not going to dumb down the truth simply because people find it misleading. The mislead is a problem in your mind which needs fixing. The truth doesn't need fixing.
This is the ultimate truth: You are God.
Now, your job is to realize it and handle it. I like to state the truth as plainly and directly as possible.
Of course healing is also something we want. You can have both. And sometimes you can't. There is never a guarantee of health. Health is an extremely complex issue involving thousands of subtle factors, most of which are out of your awareness and control.
I can work on increasing my consciousness and improving my health at the same time. And the two synergize.

I fall mostly into Strategist & Construct-Aware, with peaks into Unitive.

There is no one there behind all experiences. The only problem is that you think there is someone there.
So enlightenment simply entails getting ride of this feels of someone having ever been.
No. All experiences are enlightenment once you simply realize there was no one ever behind them.
Experience isn't the problem, the only problem is that self-image which keeps feeding itself, telling itself that there is someone to whom the experiences are happening to.
Experience does not happen to anyone.
You can become conscious of Absolute Truth. This is quite an achievement. But Absolute Truth is not anywhere elsewhere but here and now. Just remove the ego sense and all will be revealed as Absolute Truth.
Enlightenment is not merely another experience, it's a meta thing in which you realize the true nature of all experiences.

Actually, Vegas is a super affordable place to live. If you are a local here, every club has free entry for locals on Sundays-Thursdays. Parking used to be free, now it's like $10. Drinks are $18 here, but I have never bought a girl a drink in my life and have no intention of starting. Dates can be super cheap. A date for me is a $5 coffee or ice cream.
If you want to hit up the hottest clubs in the world on Fri/Sat, that will cost you $40/night. But the clubs in Vegas are off the hook amazing. You've never seen so many hot girls in your life. $40/night is worth it if you're serious about developing your skills and you have a decent salary.
If you are clever, you can do pickup very cheap or even free. Depends a lot on location. Drinks in Austin, TX are like $3 and none of the bars have cover. Over my entire time in pickup I spent little money. Most of my money was spent simply on traveling to the best cities. And once I paid $2000 for a bootcamp.
You don't need total financial freedom to do pickup. Most of the guys who I met in pickup were not financially free. They had normal 9-5 jobs and gamed at night or on the weekends.
The biggest challenge is not money, it's time and energy. Pickup eats up a ton of time and energy. But still guys are able to do it while holding down regular jobs. I have met accountants, pilots, engineers, doctors, dentists, salesmen, etc. who did serious pickup.
Personally, I took a lot of time off work/biz to invest into pickup, and it was worth it. Of course I could only do that because I already was financially independent. But don't let this be a limiting belief. You don't have to be. But also, why not do both?!

God is the realization that there is no self, or that the Self is infinite, rather than some limited form.
It's very much like realizing you aren't human but the entire universe.

Nope. Winners know exactly what they want.
Sure, they may be fooling themselves in the absolute spiritual sense, but it is possible to have a clear vision and desire in the relative domain and achieve it. Of course this has nothing to do with happiness, but that's another matter.
How do you think Actualized.org was created?
I knew 8 years ago exactly what I wanted it to be (in the big picture). Without that vision it would have never happened.
Be a visionary!

God designed the universe with such a narrow balance of good and evil that you can never fall asleep
And yet, progress is always made.
We ended slavery
We got anti-trust regulation.
We got the 8 hour work day.
We got social security.
We got legal women equality.
We got legal racial equality.
We got legal gay equality.
We got coverage for pre-existing conditions.
Luckily the status quo is self-defeating.

There is value in the alpha/beta distinction in the sense that you can turn yourself into a much stronger man. Not physically stronger per se, but spiritually stronger.
You can become a lion among men. Which is a good thing. But it must be genuine strength rooted in consciousness and Love, not some frat-boy machismo which is compensating for insecurity, fear, and lack of consciousness.
Teaching men how to be strong is a great and important teaching. You just have to be careful not to turn it into toxic masculinity, which is all too easy.

Again, it's not about the actual sex, but about learning the skills to be a strong, attractive man. Those skills actually do create lasting fulfillment.
And the sex doesn't have to be low quality. You will find cool girls and they can become your girlfriend which can grow into deep amazing sex.

If others aren't real, then there is no me doing anything. There is only you imagining me.
What's happening here is that you are imagining duality because you are trying to keep yourself asleep. You don't want to wake up.
It does matter, if you care about awaking up.
All perspectives are the illusion. There are none. Only you, sitting there, imagining stuff.
You see... you don't really want to fully wake up. You want a comfy partial awakening. Not a full one. A full one would annihilate the universe and everyone in it.