Survival
Rocks don't survive so well. For an object to be really good at survival it needs to be extremely complex.
The body does a lot more fancy stuff than a rock. A rock cannot tell itself that it is real. The body can. In this respect it is both smarter and dumber than a rock

If the mind is deeply stilled a nondual state of consciousness will eventually set in, because duality is created by an active mind.
But merely 5 minutes of stillness will not be enough. You need long periods of stillness over many days, weeks, months, years. It can't just be a temporary stillness, the mind actually has to rewire itself to be less active by default.
From stillness insight can arise. This insight leads to enlightenment.

Wait till you realize that clean vs dirty is a duality.
That's when everything goes full-circle and you find yourself smearing your feces on your neighbor's dishes.
Then when he calls the cops and they arrest you, you'll tell them that freedom vs captivity is just a duality.
Then when the prison psychiatrist examines you, and asks you what's wrong with you, you'll tell him that right vs wrong is just a duality.
Then when he suspects you're insane, you'll tell him that that sanity vs insanity is just a duality.
Then they will put you in the insane asylum where you will be safely kept away from infecting the minds of ordinary folks with the Truth.
And finally you'll die and realize it was all a dream anyway, since life vs death is just a duality

After you die, keep dying until you live through all possible lives. Then you will have lived through it all
Enlightenment is not about seeing through my eyes. Enlightenment is about something even more radical: realizing you are the entire universe.
To realize you are the entire universe does not require you to live through many different lives. You can realize it by staying in your current life.
It's not about becoming multicentered but rather becoming omnipresent/nothing. This does not allow you to see through others eyes. You just realize you are EVERYTHING regardless of what is visible. Your consciousness goes so infinite that visual data simply doesn't matter.
Bottomline is: you are too attached to visual forms. They are not important in this pursuit. You need to turn inward and inquire what you are. That will then explode into infinity.
The nothing you find through self-inquiry is also infinity, since nothing and infinity must be identical. This infinity is what connects you to all living beings without any need to look through their eyes.
I don't need to experience your life to know I am you. All I need to do is realize I am infinite.

@Nemo28 Yes, there is an answer but it's so radical you won't understand it.
You are the obstacle to understanding this.
In truth you ARE looking through the eyes of all being simutaneously. One of whom is this human you think you are now. To be a human precisely means that you are only looking through one set of eyes.
To look through the eyes of all humans does not mean you get to compare all their experiences. It means precisely that you are cut off in your own little private world. A trilion private worlds.
It works just like an online mutliplayer game.
You are me writing this comment. But you are so fully me that you don't even know you're you! Because you are fully me! You are so fully me that you have no memory of ever having been you! And vice versa.
Ta-da!
The mistake you're making is that you are imagining being me while still retaining elements of you. No, you have to fully forget yourself. In other words, you must die. Still want to be me?

You're talking about here is dual vs nondual states of consciousness.
In a nondual state of consciousness the notion of a self is missing. You and reality are one. Subject and object are one.
How long it lasts can vary depending on many factors. It could last a minute or a lifetime.

A report of 9 months of serious and continuous work with entheogens, mostly Ayahuasca and 5 -MeO- DMT, but also Psilocybe, raw DMT (changa), LSD,  raw Ibogaine and Bufotenine. 
Where was I ? I was a seeker. I had the bases of reading hundreds of books of Leo's book list, watched documentaries, meditate, lived at Vipassana centers, did many practices which Leo used to emphasis (self-inquiry, contemplation, kryia yoga), traveled the world seeking to immerse and understand red, blue and orange stages. Internally I was dealing with strong negative emotions, stuck in victimhood and was not aware of Love.  I had hundreds of fundamental questions, including but not limited to... Who am I ? What this path will lead me TO ? What is infinity ? How do I know I exist rather then am I a piece of own imagination ? What is LOVE ? What is consciousness ? What/ who is GOD ? WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE, the Absolute, the TOTAL TRUTH ? What is the very essence of reality ?  Why does LEO pushes us so much into these questions ? 
First Ayahuasca trip- The veil was broken. Infinity had no problem to answer directly to my mind. I understood. Extremely shocking, but all my questions were answered. I understood duality. I spoke to God directly. I experienced the full blown nonduality.
Magic unfolds - After each trip as I started to embody the I AM, the Creator and the creation, creating itself, for itself, by itself, my life as a human being in duality had a huge shift. On the first months I experience the beginning of the opening of God's heart into my body. Every trip I went deeper and deeper on this opening process. Eventually I reached a point where duality/my mind was able to experience LOVE when/ if it wants. ''I am loving awareness'' exercise became natural. I recognized LOVE as the TRUTH of my heart and its present in every little cell in the universe. I no longer needed to seek for LOVE or God. Contemplation became an expression of Love which Creation did for love, out of love, to love and TO ME. Creation gifted ME in many ways, by creating trees for example, as a way to express RAW LOVE. 
As my heart was opening I realized my mind is not fully purified. There is a state of unconditional love but I still have many impurity coming from the dual-mind. 
In my personal life it all became extremely intense, I am still getting used to experience ALL feelings and sensations at the same time. I became authentic, brave, joyful,sensitive and intuitive. I can see exactly where I am going and how it will unfold by having perseverance and focus on my assignment as a human being. I am learning how to be an example of a conscious citizen of Earth. I am learning how to apply ALL MY VALUES through my daily life in all actions I do. 
Mostly I now can affirm I am no longer a seeker, I have found ALL I have ever looked for. I was looking for TRUTH and I found LOVE! There is so much love in every cell of my body, in every atom I am experiencing, in every action of my life, in every corner of my house, in every word of the company I work for... often seems like I WILL EXPLODE OUT OF LOVE. 
I live in duality, and in duality I learned how to play the game. Ask and its given. Put your intention out there - especially before a trip and it will give to you! YESSSS INDEED YOU ARE GOD and GOD LOVES ITSELF and ALL you ever wanted this personification of YOU, will give to the YOU. 
Intensity - My last 5 - MeO- DMT trip 4 days ago was so shocking, so radical, so destroying, so full of GODhood... today I am in eternal gratitude to be recognizing myself in duality as a human being experiencing the Oneness from a small perspective. Thats the beauty of LIFE. Like hundreds before me and after me, we affirm THIS IS THE ONLY PATH. A seeker who has found its treasures will affirm to all humanity that this is the PATH. I have experienced every  pain, sorrow, fear, hate, love, agony, BEAUTY, joy your mind can ever grasp through my past trips. And I can affirm again, THIS IS THE ONLY PATH. 
Final outcome - Serious practices and working with potent entheogens has transformed my life in degrees unimaginable. Within the period of 9 months I have accomplished everything I have intent for since my first trip. That's the amazing power of psychedelics. The medicine will give you what your intentions are. SEEK, knock, walk the path UNTIL you realize the way. 
Today  I celebrate life as a simple human being who often forgets I am GOD in order to experience duality exactly as its! I AM. I am aware I am Love. I am aware I am GOD having a human experience. The point of no return has been reached - I vow to be in service of the entire planet. I vow to myself to keep focused on my assignments, to have the discipline to embody and apply the insights and teachings I have received through the use of the entheogens. 
My heart is overwhelmed with gratitude. Leo, thank you for being one of the most important elements of my path. If I can name some master who has pointed the way, its you Leo. I am thankful,  my mind and heart has pure direct love for your being. 
Thanks all of you actualized.org community for reading and if you make this choice, to walk the path with plants and TOAD medicine, I am with you, I am in you. I am ABSOLUTE LOVE. 
Enjoy what you are. 
In love,
In gratitude,
in service. 

 
''Live up to understand the Zen''
 
 
 
 
 

The distinction between inanimate objects and humans is imaginary. When the self fully collapses, it is impossible to distinguish yourself as a human from your carpet.
THERE IS SUCH THING AS HUMANS! You're imagining it!
When you understand this, this opens up interesting possibilities such as being a coffee table or a rock.
Consciousness is a universal field. It does not belong to humans or even to creatures. Rather the universal field of consciousness imagines humans and creatures within itself. In the same way that you might carve a human body out of a block of ice. The ego/self is that carving out process which is constantly on-going. That is what we call survival. To survive as a self you must constantly keep chiseling the ice to maintain your identity. This you do by thinking and imaging yourself to be a real self. For this you use memories, stories, concepts, emotions, and a slew of defense mechanisms such as denial, projection, justification, self-bias, etc.

This is my opinions on Leo's defense on Slavoj Zizek's Buddhism critiques. This is for fun. Nothing too serious but there are some important things I'd like to say.
I'm not a Buddhist but I use Buddhist techniques as a primary investigation towards what is true. I definitely understand Leo's arguments but Slavoj Zizek doesn't appear to have a sophisticated understanding of Buddhism. This seems evident not only from his arguments but also from his non-experiential and academic demeanor.
Here are some of the key points I'd like to talk about.
Zizek's argument: Life is suffering but not all of us wants to escape suffering. Falling in love (knowing that it will eventually lead to suffering) is given as an example to support this claim.
Leo's Defense: Suffering is only problematic from ego's perspective. God wants to experience all modalities of suffering and non-suffering as it is infinite. The reason there is so much love is that there is a lot of suffering. And that contrast of duality is the paradox of this work. 
Suffering is a negative motivation and pursuit of what is true is more authentic and less egoic motivation. Suffering is delusional so once you become conscious of what is true, non-suffering comes as a part of the package. Suffering is there for survival purposes. It is there so that you don't put your hand on a stove. 
My analysis: Both Leo and Zizek fail to make the distinction of pain and suffering to a clear degree for this argument.
Zizek doesn't seem to understand that from the ego's perspective, even the most pleasurable moment is tainted by suffering due to craving and aversion. This idea that not everyone wants to escape suffering comes from lack of experience. Lıfe, as known from ego's perspective, IS suffering both the pleasure and pain.
Ego wants to fall in life mostly because of the perceived pleasure it will bring. And it does that with a lot of craving and aversion. In this context, the ego is primarily dissatisfied without a relationship partner. It, then, realizes that falling in love comes with less suffering as a part of the package and accepts it without knowing a better alternative. Boredom and loneliness results in WAAAY more suffering compared to romantic relationships. So you are still running away from pain. The ego is just choosing the route that will result in less suffering. This is true for all egos. 
Leo is correct for the most part. I'd personally also view the pursuit of truth as a less egoic and more authentic positive motivation. But that doesn't mean people who want to eliminate suffering is shooting themselves in the foot. Leo also suffers as an ego and it gets in the way of non-dual consciousness. Once the suffering goes away, the truth is revealed. So separating these as radically different motivation is splitting hairs as both forms of motivation leads in the same non-dual consciousness. You can't know which motivation will actually get you to awakening more effectively as both are different perspectives on the path considering that awakening is a multi-faceted jewel. That motivation difference is more to the do with personality types, value systems, past experiences and conditioning.
If you were a torture victim for the past 10 years, your primary motivation for awakening would be to escape from suffering by penetrating the experience of physical pain, not realizing what is true. On the contrary, if you were to spent the last 10 years discussing and thinking about philosophy, truth and science in relative comfort, your view of the spiritual path would be about realizing what is true. And non-suffering would come as a part of that pursuit. 
Leo's motivation is more holistic and deeper but that doesn't devalue suffering as a motivation in the beginning of the path. In fact, I'd argue that suffering was at least a part of the reason why Leo started the path even as a truth seeker. As you go deeper, your motivations and value systems will change and become more holistic and deep.
Suffering is there for survival purposes is half-true. Pain is there for survival purposes. Suffering is how pain feels like from the ego's perspective. And ultimately suffering is an illusion because there is no self that can suffer.
Also about Leo's example: The non-dual consciousness would also not result in you putting your hand in a stove. You don't become stupid when you get awake.
You still experience pain as a raw sensation but there is no suffering anymore. You CAN turn this raw burning pain sensation into a pleasurable experience but when you are on that level of non-duality, would you even do such an act? You can do the same more effectively sitting on a chair and breathing. You might argue that on such levels of consciousness the distinction between breathing and putting your hand on a stove disappears but I'd say this as a counter-argument:
 Deep Awakening not only results in compassion for others but also yourself as the distinction between 'self' and 'other' is transcended on a deep level. Deep Awakening doesn't turn you into a masochist for this reason. I know Leo is aware of this but his example gave the impression that awakening would result in such behaviors. 
I agree with Leo's defense for the rest of the points. 

Yes, indeed, populism (aka, democracy) is a good thing. The problem is when right-wingers get a hold of populism. They turn it into ethnocentrism, a la the Nazis in WWII. Trump's populism is a fake populism because of course he doesn't give a shit about fixing systemic income inequality. He's using populism to create a culture war. This is a perversion of populism, which is supposed to be about increase democracy. But the culture war against the SJWs has blinded the right wing so much that they cannot see that democracy is being undermined. While the right wingers satisfy themselves on hating the SJWs, they overlook how the rich are just using this distraction to get richer. The right has misidentified the problem as globalist elite liberals, when in fact the problem is the systemic inequalities of the capitalism status quo. But right wingers cannot see this because they are traditionalists who blindly defend the status quo even if it harms their economic self-interest.
The problem is the status quo needs to change. But conservatives, by their very nature, do not like change. They want to keep things as it was in "the good old days". But because society evolves we cannot ever go back to "the good old days", and they were never really good to begin with for many people. Conservatives create a fantasy/myth of the good old days and deny the reality of a rapidly evolving society. It's no accident that many conservatives deny evolution. They really don't like change. They want the safety of the past. But this cannot happen in an ever-globalizing world. We cannot go back to living as individual isolated nations. The world is too interconnected via technology & trade. The solution is to embrace change and take conscious control of it, rather than letting it unconsciously blindside us. What we need is proactive government, but we aren't getting it because conservatives have demonized proactive government as "big government", "communism", "government overreach", "world domination by liberal elites", etc.
What we need is FDR style government that makes massive investments in domestic improvements and big picture coordination, similar to what we had for the space race. Government can do amazing things like moon landings if they are properly funded and given a clear vision. This requires good leadership.

Dry insight tends to work very poorly in my experience.
The key function of psychedelics is to lube up the mind, placing it in a deep samadhi state from which profound insight becomes almost effortless.
Psychedelics are samadhi in a pill.

@Cykaaaa That's the whole point of epistemology: you don't know what you don't know.
It's very helpful be keep that in the back of your mind at all times.
Closedminded people will of course project their closedmindedness onto you. That is devilry 101. But be careful because you can easily fall into that trap yourself.
The point is that reality is such that you can never draw any clear & stable lines. When you deeply grok this, you stop worrying about drawing lines. Drawing lines is the chief human delusion. All drawn lines are imaginary.
I have not drawn any firm lines. I'm always open to being proven wrong.
But practically, I usually know when someone is bullshitting me because I have a lot of direct experience to fall back on. But even so, I'm still open because my understanding is never complete or perfect.
Someone like a far-right nationalist I would not even bother taking seriously. They are obviously and hopelessly unconscious. It's not worth the time reasoning with them because they are completely in denial about their self-biases.
Just because your mind is open does not mean you have to take every fool seriously.
As a good rule of thumb, before taking a person's intellectual position seriously, I first need to see that he/she has a basic understanding of self-deception and self-bias. If they do not understand the significance of self-deception or self-bias, I can basically guarantee they are deeply deluded and so I will never take them too seriously. I can still learn from them, but it's going to be small potatoes stuff.
Once you have some awakening to the Absolute, that gives you a nice ground for cutting through bullshit. Until then you're really lost in a sea of bullshit with no clear compass to orient yourself because you cannot even know if anything I say is true.

You are not appreciating yet just how relentless survival is. Survival dominates EVERYTHING in life. It's almost impossible to see beyond survival. Almost.
I suggest to you that you do not deeply understand survival, and that should invest more time observing it and contemplating it in action.

Look at your hand. That hand is an example of being.
You must ground this work directly in what's right in your experience. Not abstractions.
Being is the "stuff" that everything is. That "stuff" is consciousness.

Just because you're in some state of no-mind or absorption doesn't mean you have insight into reality.
Meditative states are not good enough here. You have to want insight. Which requiring questioning.
You can bliss out in meditation all you want, but it doesn't mean you understand what's going on and why.

Of course.
Lowercase love is ordinary human love as an emotion. It is limited and conditional. It has an opposite: hate.
Uppercase Love is an Absolute with no opposite. It is the substrate of all existence. It includes love + hate and everything else. It is not an emotion although it can trigger strong emotions of lowercase love.
Uppercase Love is a mystical awakening. It is a kind of enlightenment. This is usually a combination of feeling loving + insight into the nature of what existence is. Afterwards although you may not feel loving all the time, you still know that all of existence is Love. Love no longer is limited to a personal feeling. You can feel angry and still know it is a form of Love.
The highest feelings you get which motivate your life are a little taste of Love. But just a little taste. You will recognize the full scope of Love the moment you realize you just died.
Love = Death

Life is a constant struggle for physical survival. This is true for lions and antelope as it is for an enlightenment master in a Zen monastery. Modern society just allows us to outsource much of the "dirty work" of survival. But survival must still take place if the physical body is to stay alive for longer than a few weeks.
Enlightenment actually deactivates the Default Mode Network in the brain. So it's sort of like getting a lobotomy. You basically go brain dead at the deepest levels of enlightenment.

That was a good start. You must deepen your appreciation for life. Keep at it.
You are surrounded by infinite beauty all day long. You just gotta train yourself to appreciate it. Survival rips your attention away from the beauty of being.

Appreciation of the person's innate beauty. Not physical beauty or function. But the beauty of their totality of being.
When you can look Hitler in the eye and see his beauty, there is your love.
P.S. You are still free to kill him. Love and killing are not opposite. Seeing the beauty of a thing says nothing about what you should do from a survival perspective. You can see the beauty of cancer, but then decide to destroy the cancer. Destruction is part of the total beauty of reality.
Try this: The next time you want to kill a house fly, first, stop for moment and admire it's beauty. Then kill it and admire the beauty inherent in the destruction. Notice that without destruction there could not be life. Admire the beauty of your internal conflict and moral deliberations about killing that fly. That too is love. You feel bad because you wish you could love that fly. Yet you also know you needed to kill that fly because you cannot allow a house full of dirty flies and maggots. Admire the beauty of survival. Yours and the fly's. Admire the inherent conflict between the two of you. Let the magnitude of it hit you. Imagine yourself as the fly being killed. Notice the sad beauty of that too.

Again, that's some interpretation you're creating. I said no such thing.
Feeling good is not the existential Love I'm pointing to.
That is your relative judgment.
What you're not yet understanding is that conflict is necessary and inevitable, even within spirituality.
You cannot have a spiritual school without boundaries and conflict. This has never happened in human history and it never will because the relative domain is necessarily dualistic and exclusionary. There cannot be a fully inclusive teaching because it would become totally corrupt and ineffective. Effectiveness itself is a bias which must be enforced through exclusion.
This problem goes away beyond personal ego or some local dispute between two teachers. This is an existential problem which can only be appreciated after deep contemplation of it. Ask yourself what conflict is and why necessarily occurs. While you're at it, ask yourself what boundaries are and why social organizations must have them.
You're saying that. Not me.
I have never had a problem with the teaching of self-inquiry. I have taught it myself. I have books about it on my book list.

You are wrong.
You have simply not awoken to what God or Love are.
Emptiness is, ironically, just one facet of a much deeper thing which you have yet to access. You have not accessed it because self-inquiry is not a very effective tool to get there. And these various Buddhist and Neo-advaitan approaches which are popular today are fundamentally dogmatic and shallow. The realization of Emptiness and No-self is just the beginning of this work, which you have mistaken for the end.
If you are not conscious that you are God and that you are imagining all of physical reality, your awakening is skin deep. And if you are not conscious that Truth and Love are identical, again, your awakening is skin deep.
Everything I say here on this matter I have personally verified and become directly conscious of. And so have others before me.
I have told you guys many times, you don't understand how deep this goes.
If you do not want to follow my teachings to God and Love, then this is not the right place for you. This is not something I will compromise on. There is enough ignorance around here as it is to have to deal with supposedly awake people who deny God and Love. You can fool yourself, but you ain't foolin me.
God's eye is watching you.
You are being guided here to something far deeper than you yet understand. If you doubt that, by all means, do your own thing or follow some other teacher.

Realistically you cannot trick your way out of this problem. You must do the practices, have multiple awakenings, and do further practices to weed out all attachments, cravings, aversions, fears, clinging, etc.
In other words, by doing all of the Actualized work & practices you can, one day, get to a point where you will be unshakable. But also, to await such a point is going to create more suffering. Happiness can never be found in the future. It exists only NOW! But in order to fully surrender to the NOW you have to spend some years doing practices to calm down your mind.
Yoga, psychedelics, self-inquiry, etc.
Basically meditation teaches you authentic happiness. The happiness of NOW.

Every spiritual school has rules you must play by. Welcome to society.
If anything my rules are too lax and too accommodating of diverse perspectives. This tolerance gets abused by devils.
But I have some limits. Undercutting the highest truth I know cannot fly here. If someone wants to teach that there is no God, that love is just an emotion, that psychedelics are delusion... well... they will have to start their own school. Not in my school.
I hold WinterKnight to a higher standard because he is here in a teaching capacity and representing enlightenment. I would have less problem with it if he was just making random comments as a non-teacher.
In the future I will be screening people on this forum harder when they claim to be enlightened in order to maintain the integrity of these teachings. A lot of people come here, claim to be enlightened, and then they're off to the races with their twisted and half-baked views.
1) Your awakenings were not nearly deep enough, requiring much more embodiment work.
2) Your desire to feel good is never going to work. You cannot use spirituality to feel good. Rather, what spirituality teaches you is that no matter how bad you feel, that is good. This is very counter-intuitive. The ego wants to lock in a happy state. This is not only impossible but it is the very cause of your unhappiness. Happiness is total acceptance of whatever is happening in the present moment. That means if you're getting tortured, you accept it without trying to escape it. The desire to escape suffering is the very thing which creates suffering.
Because this is not as slight a difference as you think, and because this problem, while small now, will only grow larger and larger with my newer teachings until it comes to a head.
I have a very specific teaching I want to offer the world. I created this platform to offer this teaching because I knew that no other platform would allow me to teach what I need to teach.
This is precisely backwards. You are God. Period.
The mistake you're making here is you're still maintaining a subtle distinction between self & other. You're "otherizing" God.
You're missing the most important point of all: THAT YOU ARE GOD!
This is no metaphor. You created the whole fucking universe. But you forgot. Now you must remember.
Thousands upon thousands of people have awakened to Love. Many even on this forum.
But awakening to Love has nothing to do with walking around all loving all the time. Do not confuse Love with some sentimental positivity. You can find Love in a warzone.
Here's one example:
 
No. What I'm talking about is not emotion. It's existential insight & raw Truth. How you feel about it is irrelevant.
I understand that more than you can imagine.
No, it does not matter. Consciousness cannot really cease. It can just be empty. Empty or full doesn't matter, it's all the same Truth. Nirodha Samapatti is identical to NOW.
Existential Love is not a state. Love is all states.

It is being in the same way all concepts are being.
Just be careful not to confuse the thought of a chair for a chair.

Love is simply what is.
If you are a serious student of spiritual texts and teachings, you know that the best of them talk about love. It has nothing to do with fireworks or psychedelics. Psychedelics simply show you your deepest nature -- if you have the courage to look at yourself in your rawest form.
The reason some of guys have a hard time buying this whole love business it because you're still thinking of reality from the materialist paradigm. This paradigm can extremely subtle, such that even people who have an awakening or two -- such as Sam Harris -- still have not transcended it. According to materialism, the universe must be neutral, impersonal, and devoid of any sentimentality. This is a hyper-logical, hyper-masculine, reductionistic way of understanding reality. And it is untrue.
Consciousness is Love. It is not dumb matter or energy or even "simply what is". What is, is LOVE! And why it is, is LOVE!
Be careful not to underestimate God's goodness. That is the key mistake here. God is not neutral as you might assume.