Consilience

❤️

Exactly. And that’s the beauty of this koan. It‘s deconstructing destiny while simultaneously affirming it… if there is no determinism/destiny, no free will, what is left? Utterly wordless ?

This topic reminds me of a zen koan - In the Hands of Destiny A great Japanese warrior named Nobunaga decided to attack the enemy although he had only one-tenth the number of men the opposition commanded. He knew that he would win, but his soldiers were in doubt. On the way he stopped at a Shinto shrine and told his men: "After I visit the shrine I will toss a coin. If heads comes, we will win; if tails, we will lose. Destiny holds us in her hand." Nobunaga entered the shrine and offered a silent prayer. He came forth and tossed a coin. Heads appeared. His soldiers were so eager to fight that they won their battle easily. "No one can change the hand of destiny," his attendant told him after the battle. "Indeed not," said Nobunaga, showing a coin which had been doubled, with heads facing either way.

The last place we’d think to look!

This. AND also penetrating your attention deeply into the sensations of the negative feelings such that their fundamental nature is seen as well as penetrating attention into the sensations of “self.” Who and what is precisely feeling these sensations? So basically… 1. Notice how you’re literally creating these emotions and therefore recognize you can create new ones. Conscious creation 2. Deconstruct the emotional sensations into their fundamental moment by moment experience until their impermanence is so obvious, there’s nothing left but phenomenological flow. Vipassana 3. Penetrate attention into who and what is experiencing these sensations. Notice how the space out of which the emotions arise is the same space witnessing the emotions and this same space is where the activities of self-survival arise out of as well. Self inquiry

Time can expand, contract, disappear, reconfigure, etc., even without psychedelics. My guess is his enlightenment was without psychedelics.

There is no you.

Space and time spontaneously emerge out of emptiness moment by moment, constructed by infinite creativity and intelligence, and are both completely relative to the witnessing of them. We can train attention to pay attention so deeply into the present moment that we can watch these phenomena emerge.

Some great replies above. In my experience, asking “what am I?” Feels more existential, and therefore more direct and to the heart of the matter if directly experiencing absolute truth is the goal. “Who am I?” has lead more to a sense of discovering the meta context of self-survival activity… almost like feeling the blue prints of the soul. Very profound but not the ultimate.

Ive done a combination of techniques outlined in the book “The Mind Illuminated,” Rob Burbea’s Jhana retreat, Shinzen Young’s See Hear Feel vipassana technique, self inquiry/contemplation based on the work of Peter Ralston, Zen “do nothing”/shikantaza meditation, and loving kindness metta practices. Ive done 3 meditation retreats and a couple of Cheng Hsin workshops. Ive also aggressively used psychedelics/weed in the past. All have contributed to where Im at right now. Biggest “boost” to practice was learning how to go deep with concentration practices like the jhanas. Once I was able to go deep with jhanas, my first vipassana retreat radically deconstructed all sense of reality, time, and space. Ever since then meditation has regularly induced drug like effects, only increasing. Lately Ive been doing the “do nothing” technique primarily. Just sitting and letting reality do whatever it wants with as little interference as possible. Body sensations, sights, sounds tend to dissolve into spacious fluidity, become boundless. When eyes are closed Emptiness becomes particularly apparent.

This. Ultimately, it’s fine. But relatively, there is a bit of sadness. The one caveat is that those who are truly committed to the truth will find a way out of the delusion. Those who are playing games would have very likely gotten distracted and trapped through other means anyways, with or without Actualized.org. And honestly, there is still a lot of value with Actualized.org, there are a hell of a lot worse places to get stuck. And psychedelics are enormously powerful, healing tools when used appropriately.

Meditation is very effective. 1 hour per day isn’t going to provide dramatic results though.

Im happy for you. Keep going dude. Leo’s direct teaching is that is is about state chasing. He’s said this many times, so Im not suggesting anything radical. Yes meditation changes my state. Ive started to enter into states via meditation more powerful than small-medium doses of LSD or mushrooms. But meditation has also facilitated a growing detachment with these states, a clarity around the nature of all experiences and the underlying Being, the underlying “God-ness” of any and all states. Sitting in quiet boredom is starting to feel just as satisfying and divine as having my body dissolve into boundless space. The fact that Leo and many of the forum are so hung up about increasing one‘s state without holding in equal space the necessity of am equilibrium beyond states, a non-dualiry, is a huge blindspot. Those who are serious about the work will recognize it.

I've heard of MDMA described as an empathogen rather than an entheogen. The distinction seemed appropriate.

Very disappointing that Leo is doubling down on this rhetoric. The short story is, psychedelics are not a complete path. There comes a point where all of the state chasing has to come to an end. There comes a point where the duality between a 5meo god consciousness state and the normal mundane experience collapses. It’s actually pretty fucking simple but an ego who is fixated on states, methods, highs, “muh god-realization,” etc., won’t hear this. In 10 years, when you’ve slacked off on serious spiritual practice (thousands of hours of silent meditation, contemplation, etc.,) and you still can’t reach these states without drugs, when you still cant recognize the absolute divinity of this very moment, the series meditators will be blissing out on God in any and all states. It is what it is.

What’s your daily meditation practice like? How much retreat experience do you have?

You’re just redefining what enlightenment means to fit your self-bias. Enlightenment = God.

I think Shinzen Young does a retreat in or near Canada. If you’re looking for a zen/vipassana hybrid, highly recommend.

Glad it was helpful. ? And seriously! He is truly on another level.

Feels ??

I took an SDS course from guru viking awhile back : Dude is a beast. He offered some really great suggestions during the course Ill outline. 1) Work yourself up incrementally. No reason to jump into something super challenging immediately. This is a pretty standard principle of any domain of mastery though. 2) Three strike rule - the first time you’re genuinely wanting to quit, let it go. Second time, let it go. Third time, go on ahead and move. 3) Allow yourself to minimally adjust and reposition your spine/posture. SDS Light that is probably better for the body overall but given how small the movements are, you wont be interrupting the stream of pain. 4) Duration training - rather than making the SDS about not physically moving the body, just sit for a long period of time allowing yourself to adjust as needed. The length of the sit will create emotional tension/dis-ease (and physical pain as well, just not as much as a normal SDS) which we can apply equanimity towards. Don’t underestimate this form of sitting either. 5) Have fun Don’t take the pain or discomfort too seriously.

Psychedelics alone are not a complete path, no. Particularly once we directly experience just how ridiculously we can increase our consciousness through sober practice. Anyone saying meditation can’t take you to god realization is someone who lacks direct experience with meditation. It will take thousands of hours practice to reach psychedelic levels of consciousness while sober, but a couple things: 1) The benefits are enormous, 2) There’s a sovereignty, unity, and power associated with being able to access these states without chemical augmentation, 3) There’s a compound, exponential return on investment with meditation - in other words, 0 - 1000 hours is going to look VERY different than 1001 - 2000 hours, will look VERY different than 9001 - 10000 hours. Meditation “progress” is non-linear, meditation progress is exponential, particularly in the long run. Psychedelics show what is possible, but truly, the highest level of understanding is embodiment. Psychedelics unfortunately cannot do that.

This is completely normal and to be expected once a meditator advances a long the path. ? There is but also deep similarities. All the trippy, fluidity, spaciousness we feel on psychedelics is completely available while sober during meditation if we have enough concentration, sensory clarity, and equanimity (ie mindfulness). My first vipassana retreat, I ended up ‘tripping balls’ 5 days straight, enormous amount of visuals and paper thinness around experience. Turns out psychedelics ramp up concentration and sensory clarity to such high magnitudes, that they simulate what high-level meditators are experiencing every time they sit down to practice. The difference with meditation is that there is a uniquely powerful stability to attention that you don’t get with psychedelics. So the tranquility and harmony of the mind is unmatched when compared to psychedelics. However, psychedelics can introduce novel ways and paradoxical ways of thinking that we don’t typically have access to while sober. They can also launch us into ridiculous levels of consciousness that we don’t normally have access to. A healthy approach is to balance both practices with the other, and ultimately using meditation to integrate and embody the ways of thinking and ways of perceiving life that we get with psychedelics while also training the benefits of stability and tranquility we get with meditation.

This. "So you should view this fleeting world -- A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, A flash of lightening in a summer cloud, A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream." - Diamond Sutra The problem with idealism is it doesn’t deconstruct deeply enough. Depending on the philosopher, they may recognize the immediately actuality and “irreducibility” of direct experience, but they miss an important part - there is still The Absolute, which is not form yet not separate from form. When the Absolute is grasped, all of phenomenal existence is seen to be literally non-existent, no more real than a dream, and even that‘s giving too much authority to its “thing-ness.” At the deepest levels of understanding, there is nothing, infinity, god, love, which is qualitatively, palpably, formless. It‘s an absolute mind fuck.

This is an awesome breakdown man. Couldn’t agree more about spending time hanging out with awareness; not sure if anything matches the silence, stillness, and space of formal meditation. Thank you for sharing your routine. ? Any Qigong youtube channels you’d recommend?