TheAvatarState

@clouffy the closest equation I can come up with is: Enlightenment = Being - You But obviously this game is really silly, so drop your concepts.

@Shaun you got the deepness of it correct, but you're still interpreting it from your little ego because you were given the answers without doing the work. Appreciate the bind that your ego is in... you just fed yourself information that killed itself! I understand how rough that can be... Take a chill pill and watch this video:

@Belay kelemework Leo titled the video "for smart people" for a reason.

Leo's Self-Deception series parts 1-3, and of course the Spiral Dynamics series. Just those alone have radically transformed my outlook on life over a few months.

Psychedelics have been known to cause psychosis to those already genetically predisposed. If you decide to use them, you should probably exercise extreme caution. Start with microdosing. Work your way up very incrementally, and never exceed a "medium" dose of any psychedelic. You should be OK if you do that, but it's up to you if the risks are worth it for you.

Rather, it has you

@Aakash ... So how's your spiritual retirement going?

No. I said that for you to exist, there must be suffering, and that is by design. Suffering is not "bad," it is what it is. If you hold your current position, that must also mean that YOU are a mistake or random coincidence. Is that so?

I didn't say it prefers suffering. Suffering is an experiential fact of life! Your ego couldn't exist if you couldn't suffer to some degree. Suffering is part of Maya, the illusion. I'm working towards loving and accepting all of reality as it is, and that's not a small or easy task...

Not all enlightened masters are right about everything. And not only that, perhaps he knows but he keeps that ultimate truth to himself because it is so damn uncomfortable for his audiences. Just something to think about.

Yes. Notice that you usually think to yourself using words and symbols (English). Thinking as a conceptual activity must use a medium you know of (the English language is a concept) to operate. Here's a thought experiment: How would a person think before knowing language? As a small child, what might your thinking process look like? And yes, contemplation through journaling is great! Giving form to your thoughts can help with recall and mapping out your ideas.

@josephcampbellworld Because censorship is a very powerful enslavement technique to keep certain dogmas locked in. It happens in religions, mainstream culture, governments, etc... Should be pretty obvious.

Cold showers are the best! There's no suffering to be found when you're present in the experience. Suffering happens when you run from the pain and wish it stopped, when you fully accept and feel it, it feels great.

Because his last video was almost 4 hours. Be patient and grateful for this amazing content! I know it's hard sometimes.

Oh, but you did! You are the Absolute! The question is have you become conscious of it?

@AlphaAbundance You're trying to interpret this Truth from your ego's perspective. However, you fail to see that your ego isn't a factor in the equation... You're going to stop being "you" when you physically die. So what are you really asking? Your post is a projection of your belief that life itself is Hell. Perhaps you should question that belief.

@Aakash Little did he know, the journey was just beginning... Godspeed

@Shin going from conceptual knowledge to experience is a bitch sometimes, isn't it? ??? you'll be fine!

@lmfao the Wim Hoff method helps a lot! You're never cold when the cold is your teacher

@Lynnel actually for there to be a problem, that immediately implies a solution. For example, world hunger is a problem that will take many generations to improve and get fixed. There is that hope of getting better (solution). On the other hand, from the context of an individual stuck in a horrible yet un-fixable life situation, you can't really look at it as a problem because there's no solution. It's just a sad fact of life (for that individual). Looking at an un-fixable situation as a "problem" is neurotic and leads to more suffering. Again, this is at an individual level. Not saying we shouldn't learn from the atrocities of guantanamo bay... These "problems" only exist to us humans from our perspective. It's only a way to look at the world to enact change over a period of time. If you zoom out to the universal level, none of this stuff even pops up on the radar. No "problems" actually exist, because reality is the way it was meant to be. Really try to expand your awareness to see that.

@Bodhidharma Thank you for the support! In the same vein, I'd say many of the characters of Avatar the Last Airbender give me similar courage and inspiration. Yeah, it's hard coming from a cushy life with no discipline. Really fucking hard...

@Leo Gura So reality isn't the ONLY way it could be? But if it were different, wouldn't that undermine Beauty and Perfection?

I did not choose to write that, it was spontaneous based on what I felt like saying upon seeing your post. I did not choose to see your post. I'm not actually choosing these words, they just come to me, and I'm experiencing typing on the keys, but there is no "doer" here. See, I'm thinking now, "He's going to take this like I'm a lunatic! How could anyone believe this!" Nevertheless, it is true and you can become conscious of this as well. Your ego will take this like a giant threat, and it will be really scary... but ask yourself, "To whom is this information scary? If it's the truth, who could this be threatening to?" On one hand, it is absolute terror and absolution into oblivion. Past that, it is absolute liberation. I started a thread today called "The right time and place to talk about no free will?" I suggest you read through that. And yes, I understand this is completely crazy, but I felt like I had to write it, for better or worse. Peace, brother.

If this is the case, do you think that the only thing holding the "laws of physics" in place is the limiting belief of most of society that there are such things? Said another way: if a certain portion of the population were to have the knowledge of actualized.org, do you think physical reality as we know it would start to REALLY become whacky and mystical? Because with my current understanding, we live in a participatory universe, and perhaps our collective consciousness is creating its own limits... What are you thoughts on this?

Yes, many times. The first few times on psychedelics, but that opened me up enough to where I have felt this a lot while sober. For instance, I had the pleasure of going to a Halloween ball at COSM (Alex Grey's estate in upstate NY), and the sense of collective consciousness blew me away! The best I can describe it is it's like I'm tripping but I'm not. My conditioning of consciousness happening in my "brain" is looooong gone, and yeah, it was quite scary the first few times. I really resonate with this. It is a relative, collective consciousness. I like to think of collective ego and collective consciousness as a system. Any system within the larger system of Universal Mind is relative. My take on it is that if on the individual level we have no free will, that means a system made up of many individuals also can't have free will. It may SEEM to have a "will" of its own because it is much more complex than any one person, but it is fundamentally just a collection of things operating at a higher level. There is still no reason to believe there's an output with no input. There is no "chooser," it's just an infinitely causal system. Whatever the universe can do, a human can do by rule, and vice versa, whatever the individual is governed by, a larger system must also adhere to. Adding more complexity does not create extra superpowers... at least that's my current knowledge of systems. That's a great point. Dual and nondual are just distinctions to help us understand, and that can be helpful, but at the highest level EVERYTHING is nondual. I think that understanding the holographic nature of reality is helpful. You can cut off the tiniest piece of infinity, and it will still reflect the whole image. With that in mind, I think that no matter if we're talking about an individual consciousness, an amoeba consciousness, or the Absolute consciousness, it is all the same. Which is why everything can be found within.